A Complete Analysis Of Trump’s 102nd Unpresidented Week As POTUS

A historic week of progress under a historically regressive president.
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by: Ahmed Baba on January 6, 2019

Nancy Pelosi, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, lhan Omar, Sharice Davids, and Lauren Underwood.

Nancy Pelosi, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, lhan Omar, Sharice Davids, and Lauren Underwood.

Trump’s first major typo after winning the election was spelling Unprecedented incorrectly. He infamously tweeted “Unpresidented.” This typo is a personification of his administration: An impulsive, frantically thrown together group of characters with virtually no oversight. After Trump was sworn in, I started writing the weekly “Unpresidented” column, analyzing his every move. This is week 102.

This was the week Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi secured her place as one of the most successful politicians in American history.

This was the week members of the most female and racially diverse group of people elected the House of Representatives in American history were sworn into office.

But it was also the week President Trump’s administration continued their federal funding hostage situation and tactics of disinformation, authoritarian-like behavior, and shameless hypocritical rhetoric.

Hostage situation: President Trump is still continuing his government shutdown and holding federal funding hostage for his unnecessary, unpopular, and costly wall.

Disinformation: President Trump regurgitated Soviet-era propaganda about Russia’s invasion of Afghanistan (and several other lies outlined later in this piece).

Authoritarianism: President Trump threatened to declare a state of emergency so he can bypass Congress and build the wall (sure to have legal challenges.)

Hypocrisy: President “Grab Em By The Pussy” Trump said that Rep. Rashida Tlaib’s “impeach the motherfucker” comment was “disgraceful.”

While we’re on the subject of hypocrisy, this week we learned more about Trump’s hiring of undocumented immigrants. The man whose entire political platform is built on the xenophobic idea that Latino immigrants are rapists, criminals, and taking American jobs, hired undocumented immigrants. Perhaps the wall would be more effective if it surrounded Trump’s golf courses.

But never fear, because this week was a step forward. Historians will mark January 3, 2019, as the day decency began to be restored during a depraved presidency that put America on the brink of authoritarianism.

It will mark the day women, LGBTQ people, and people of color found their rightful places in Democratic leadership, as the Republican Party continued their descent into political powerlessness.

It will mark the day that the first step towards a restoring a U.S. government that spends time tackling the most serious challenges of our time like climate change, healthcare reform, education reform, income inequality, and systemic racism.

All of that will happen, but only if we work every day as relentlessly as we would if November 3, 2020, was tomorrow.

So let’s get to work.

This comprehensive column sources great reporting from top news organizations, but it’s also built on brilliant analysis from my team at Rantt Media. If you like the work we do, please consider supporting us by making a one-time donation or signing up for a monthly subscription.

New Years Eve Weekend

Day 709, 710, and 711: Saturday, Sunday, and Monday – December 29, 30, 31

President Donald Trump speaks to members of the media before boarding Marine One on the South Lawn of the White House in Washington, Friday, Nov. 2, 2018. (AP Photo/Andrew Harnik)

President Donald Trump speaks to members of the media before boarding Marine One on the South Lawn of the White House in Washington, Friday, Nov. 2, 2018. (AP Photo/Andrew Harnik)

Over the weekend, as Americans looked back at the roller coaster that was 2018, President Trump sent his most depraved tweets yet.

This came as the shutdown fight continued.

In other news…

New Year, Same Trump, New Jeff Flake Clone

Day 712:  Tuesday, January 1, 2019

President Donald Trump speaks to the Conservative Political Action Conference, Friday, Feb. 24, 2017, in Oxon Hill, Md. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)

President Donald Trump speaks to the Conservative Political Action Conference, Friday, Feb. 24, 2017, in Oxon Hill, Md. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)

New Year’s Day was fairly quiet as mainstream cable news wasn’t on the air and most Americans recovered from much-deserved relaxation and partying. What they woke up to though, was far from relaxing.

Maybe it’s just me, but nothing about an unhinged all-caps tweet telling me to “CALM DOWN AND ENJOY THE RIDE” makes me ready to remain calm or stay on the ride.

Among his many tweets, President Trump decided to attack a well-respected General who simply used his constitutional right of criticizing the president.

President Trump and his former UN Ambassador Nikki Haley went on to praise the right-wing, bigoted, authoritarian new president of Brazil.

In the evening, newly elected Senator Mitt Romney published an op-ed that condemned President Trump’s character, before saying the very next day he would vote for his wall.

Presiden Trump responded:

Also, Rantt’s Managing Editor Remy Carreiro pointed out this important detail.

In other news…

  • The New York Times reported:

  • Oh, and how could I forget? Kanye…well, Kanyed again.

  • And a personal note for all of you who read my work each week, I hit a cool milestone.

What Will Happen In 2019?

Day 713: Wednesday: January 2

From top left: Donald Trump, Nancy Pelosi, Robert Mueller, Xi Jinping, Vladimir Putin (AP)

From top left: Donald Trump, Nancy Pelosi, Robert Mueller, Xi Jinping, Vladimir Putin (AP)

From the new Democratic House’s oversight to Trump’s continued corrosion of western alliances, 2019 will be a year for the history books.

In 2018, many of our predictions came true. So, to continue this tradition started by Rantt’s Foreign Affairs Editor Jossif Ezekilov, here are predictions for 2019 from some of us here at Rantt Media (all of which came from a discussion in our newsroom Slack chat, which you can sign up and join here):

And as we were tweeting the story out, some of our Trump-related predictions were coming true. President Trump held an unhinged Cabinet meeting in which he spouted Soviet propaganda.

This is a great article from The Washington Post that fact-checks that Soviet propaganda, as well as some of the other false claims Trump made during the meeting: Fact-checking Trump’s freewheeling Cabinet session

In other news…

  • And as the new class of lawmakers were to be sworn in the following day, all thoughts were on the historical significance.

The Return Of The Speaker

Day 714: January 3

Nancy Pelosi of Calif., right, claps between her two grandsons on stage with House Democrats after speaking about Democratic wins in the House of Representatives to a crowd of Democratic supporters during an election night returns event at the Hyatt Regency Hotel, on Tuesday, Nov. 6, 2018, in Washington. (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin)

Nancy Pelosi of Calif., right, claps between her two grandsons on stage with House Democrats after speaking about Democratic wins in the House of Representatives to a crowd of Democratic supporters during an election night returns event at the Hyatt Regency Hotel, on Tuesday, Nov. 6, 2018, in Washington. (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin)

After leading the Democrats to a historic victory in the midterms, on Thursday, Nancy Pelosi made history once again and further solidified herself as one of the most successful politicians in American history.

Just as Nancy Pelosi made history, so did the new class of representatives. They are members of the most diverse and female group elected Congress in American history.

And that night, they got straight to work.

Associated Press: House Democrats vote to reopen government, reject Trump’s demand for wall funding

CNN: Democrats to ask for 10 years of presidential tax returns in new bill

In other news…

MotherfuckerGate

Day 715: January 4

Representative Rashida Tlaib (D-MI)

Representative Rashida Tlaib (D-MI)

I’ll let Rantt’s Managing Editor Remy Carreiro take it from here, because no one put it better than her:

Thursday saw the historic swearing-in of the most diverse Congress ever. Voters in November elected record numbers of women, people of color, and LGBTQ+ individuals to represent, and this freshman class has proved that they are ready to hit the ground running and shake things up in Washington. It was a day full of hope and progress, a beacon of light in otherwise tumultuous times.

So naturally, the political discourse became a hot mess on Friday.

On Thursday night, hours after being sworn in, Rep. Rashida Tlaib of Michigan was filmed telling a group of supporters that Democrats will “impeach the motherfucker,” with regard to Donald Trump. And of course, because political punditry in this country loves nothing more than to clutch their pearls at impoliteness (dehumanizing and sometimes fatal immigration policies, and honest to god sexual assault are apparently, still acceptable), this statement overwhelmed the discourse over the last couple days.

Instead of talking about Tlaib’s policy platform, impressive victory, or the fact that she had just become the first Palestinian-American elected to Congress, our time is now going to be spent discussing whether or not Democratic politicians should swear. Because the “civility” conversation only ever refers to the Democrats – not the President who bragged about “grabbing women by their pussies” and called certain countries “shitholes.” Although Republicans across the country spent the 2016 election screaming “fuck your feelings,” and calling every individual who promoted respect for others a “snowflake,” it is apparently up to the Democrats to maintain a level of decorum that would pass a 19th-century cotillion.

You can read her full piece here:

In other news…

  • Some background on the development of “the wall” as a campaign device.

  • Over the weekend, President Trump continued to act as if video evidence doesn’t exist.

 

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Unpresidented // Democratic Party / Donald Trump / Republican Party
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by: Ahmed Baba

Ahmed Baba is the Co-Founder and President of Rantt. Writer of Unpresidented, Ahmed documented and analyzed every day of the Trump presidency. He's also a columnist at The Independent and his work has been cited in The New York Times, The Washington Post, BBC, Rolling Stone, BuzzFeed, The New York Post, The Huffington Post, Yahoo News, Blavity, Newsweek, The Telegraph, and more. He can be reached at [email protected] or found on Twitter @AhmedBaba_.

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