Exac­tly ele­ven days ago, Donald John Trump ente­red the Whi­te Hou­se as the 45th Pre­si­dent of the Uni­ted Sta­tes of Ame­ri­ca. One can’t say that during the­se days the rab­ble-rou­sing Com­man­der-In-Chief has been twidd­ling his thumbs. One could also con­tend that it would have been much bet­ter had he done so.

On Janua­ry 20^th Donald Trump was sworn in as the next Pre­si­dent of the Uni­ted Sta­tes after Barack Oba­ma. His speech was fun­da­men­tal­ly unli­ke any­thing we have come to expect from an inau­gu­ral address: por­tray­ing the ima­ge of a rui­ned Ame­ri­ca, sum­ma­ri­sed by the pier­cing expres­sion “Ame­ri­can Car­na­ge”, the Pre­si­dent utte­red, for the fir­st time in any inau­gu­ral address, words that go along very well with such drea­ry assess­ment of the cur­rent sta­te of things on the other side of the pond: “bleed”, “disre­pair”, “rip­ped”, “rusted”, the famous “sad”, “stealing”,“stolen” and “tomb­sto­nes”.

Also, he didn’t miss out on under­sco­ring the nationalistic/protectionist approach to poli­cy­ma­king: “from this day for­ward, it’s going to be only Ame­ri­ca fir­st” and “pro­tec­tion will lead to great pro­spe­ri­ty and strength”, defy­ing cen­tu­ries of histo­ry and the enti­re­ty of inter­na­tio­nal eco­no­mics text­books, which beg to dif­fer with such con­clu­sion. Last but not lea­st, the most alert movie­goers among us detec­ted a noti­cea­ble resem­blan­ce bet­ween a frag­ment of Bane’s speech in the 2012 movie “The Dark Night Rises”, whe­re the vil­lain sta­tes “We take Gotham from the cor­rupt! The rich! The oppres­sors of gene­ra­tions who have kept you down with myths of oppor­tu­ni­ty, and we give it back to you … the peo­ple” and “we are trans­fer­ring power from Washing­ton DC and giving it back to you, the peo­ple”.

Imme­dia­te­ly after, Twit­ter and Face­book were delu­ged with pho­tos of the Washing­ton Mall during Obama’s Inau­gu­ra­tion Day in 2009 and Trump’s in 2017 side-by-side, revea­ling of how small the atten­dan­ce was for the lat­ter, some­thing fur­ther con­fir­med by pho­tos taken during the para­de, depic­ting semi-emp­ty blea­chers as hun­dreds booed the pas­sing motor­ca­de. Befo­re hea­ding to the Inau­gu­ral Ball, Pre­si­dent Trump signed his fir­st exe­cu­ti­ve order, who­se exact con­tent is still blur­red but that was pre­sen­ted as the begin­ning of the pro­ce­du­re of the full disman­tling of the Affor­da­ble Care Act.

January 21^st will go down in history as the day of the worst first-day-on-the-job by any White House Press Secretary in the history of the country.

Sean Spi­cer, alrea­dy a meme icon on the Web, came out swin­ging sta­ting that “this was the lar­ge­st audien­ce ever to wit­ness an inau­gu­ra­tion, period” and that “the­se attemp­ts to les­sen the enthu­sia­sm of the inau­gu­ra­tion are sha­me­ful and wrong”, gain­say­ing the basic fac­ts that, one would have hoped, could never be a mat­ter of deba­te in a civi­li­zed socie­ty. Also, he scol­ded jour­na­lists for “deli­be­ra­te­ly fal­se repor­ting” and mena­ced “we’­re going to hold the press accoun­ta­ble”.

On the same day, Pre­si­dent Trump visi­ted the CIA hea­d­quar­ters at Lan­gley, VA, whe­re he gave a speech that was exten­si­ve­ly exco­ria­ted by many, fir­st among whom out­going CIA direc­tor John Bren­nan who main­tai­ned that Pre­si­dent Trump’s speech flaun­ted “despi­ca­ble display of self-aggran­di­se­ment” that left him “dee­ply sad­de­ned and ange­red”, as the Pre­si­dent spent his time tal­king about the num­ber of times he had been fea­tu­red on TIME Maga­zi­ne cover, the mat­ter of the cro­wd size and cal­led jour­na­lists “the most disho­ne­st human beings on Earth”. So much for the “I will be Pre­si­dent for all Ame­ri­cans”.

Final­ly, it was also the day of the Women’s March in Washing­ton, NY, Los Ange­les and all sorts of cities around the coun­try and the World, a pro­te­st the Pre­si­dent scor­ned the day after with the ever-pre­sent tweet “wat­ched pro­tests yester­day but was under the impres­sion that we just had an elec­tion. Why didn’t the­se peo­ple vote?”

As if Satur­day hadn’t been bad enou­gh, Kel­lyan­ne Con­way told at NBC’s Meet the Press that Mr. Spi­cer, on the pre­vious day, was just offe­ring “alter­na­ti­ve fac­ts”, sen­ding Geor­ge Orwell’s “1984” sales throu­gh the roof.

On Mon­day, Pre­si­dent Trump com­men­ced imple­men­ting his legi­sla­ti­ve agen­da, scrap­ping the TPP, set­ting up a fede­ral hiring free­ze on non mili­ta­ry-wor­kers and outla­wing fun­ding for NGOs that pro­vi­de abor­tion or pro­vi­de infor­ma­tion about abor­tion around the world.

The next day, Pre­si­dent Trump signed an exe­cu­ti­ve order that per­mi­ts the con­struc­tion of the noto­rious Key­sto­ne XL and Dako­ta Access Oil Pipe­li­nes. Pre­si­dent Trump, whi­le signing such order, avo­wed that the Key­sto­ne XL pipe­li­ne would bring “a lot of jobs, 28,000 jobs. Great con­struc­tion jobs”, flou­ting the fact that the­se jobs would be only tem­po­ra­ry, and that long-term jobs, accor­ding to a stu­dy by the Sta­te Depart­ment, will be no more than fif­ty. The Dako­ta Access Pipe­li­ne affair, a pro­ject worth almo­st four bil­lion dol­lars, gai­ned pro­mi­nen­ce during sum­mer and autumn as the Stan­ding Rock Sioux tri­be, joi­ned by thou­sands of pro­te­stors pou­ring into North Dako­ta from all over the coun­try and the world, fier­ce­ly defen­ded the waters of Lake Oahe, sco­ring a big vic­to­ry as the US army corps of engi­neers denied the final per­mit to build under the lake.

It is pro­ba­bly no coin­ci­den­ce that Pre­si­dent Trump owns shares of Ener­gy Trans­fer Part­ners (a Trump spo­ke­swo­man decla­red in ear­ly Decem­ber that the then Pre­si­dent-elect had sold his shares of Ener­gy Trans­fer Part­ners but, given the fact that the Pre­si­dent has rebuf­fed to disclo­se his tax returns, it’s dif­fi­cult to ascer­tain the legi­ti­ma­cy of such sta­te­ment) and Phil­lips 66, two of the com­pa­nies over­seeing such con­struc­tion. On Tue­sday it was repor­ted that the Pre­si­dent had debar­red the Envi­ron­men­tal Pro­tec­tion Agen­cy from using their social media accoun­ts and awar­ding new con­trac­ts or gran­ts. Going out with a bang, in the eve­ning the Twee­ter-In-Chief twee­ted that “if Chi­ca­go doe­sn’t fix the hor­ri­ble “car­na­ge” going on, 228 shoo­tings in 2017 with 42 kil­lings (up 24% from 2016), I will send in the Feds!”, a less than sub­tle refe­ren­ce to a pos­si­ble impo­si­tion of the mar­tial law in the city.

On Janua­ry 25^th, new cri­ti­ci­sms appea­red all over new­spa­pers as Pre­si­dent Trump signed two divi­si­ve exe­cu­ti­ve orders, the fir­st for the con­struc­tion of the ill-famed wall on the Mexi­can bor­der in order to keep “cri­mi­nals” and “rapists” out of the coun­try and the second to slash fun­ding to sanc­tua­ry cities, tho­se cities whe­re local law enfor­ce­ment offi­cials do not coo­pe­ra­te much with fede­ral law enfor­ce­ment offi­cials that are to imple­ment deportation.

During the usual­ly exag­ge­ra­ted signing pro­ce­du­re, Pre­si­dent Trump offe­red his “alter­na­ti­ve fac­ts” on the mat­ter, decla­ring that “we’re in the midd­le of a cri­sis on our sou­thern bor­der”, yak­king about an “unpre­ce­den­ted sur­ge” in ille­gal immi­gran­ts coming from Mexi­co and other sta­tes in Cen­tral and South Ame­ri­ca, blun­tly snub­bing the fact that immi­gra­tion is at its lowe­st point from the mid 1970s, after rea­ching its high point around 2001. Also, in an inter­view with ABC news, Pre­si­dent Trump defen­ded the use of tor­tu­re which, accor­ding to his judg­ment, “abso­lu­te­ly” works and that the Uni­ted Sta­tes need to “fight fire with fire” when it comes to terrorism.

On Janua­ry 27^th, no exe­cu­ti­ve order were signed but the feud with Mexi­co con­ti­nued as Mexico’s Pre­si­dent can­cel­led the trip to Washing­ton arran­ged for the upco­ming week after

President Trump promised the “immediate construction” of the wall and guaranteed that Mexico would end up with the bill.

Osten­si­bly, the President’s idea is to slap a 20% tax on all exports from Mexi­co to the Uni­ted Sta­tes. Such mea­su­re would imply the exact oppo­si­te of what the Pre­si­dent had cam­pai­gned on, not to men­tion the public display of a see­ming unfa­mi­lia­ri­ty with the wor­kings of a tax: Ame­ri­can con­su­mers would pay for the wall, as pri­ces on Mexi­can imports would increa­se by 20%. This is no sur­pri­se, as nobo­dy with an even vague under­stan­ding of geo­po­li­tics would have ever thought that things would have pan­ned out in Pre­si­dent Trump’s favour. Even more so after both pre­vious (Vicen­te Fox) and cur­rent (Enri­que Pena-Nie­to) Mexi­can Pre­si­dent have made cry­stal clear that “Mexi­co is not going to pay for that fuc­king wall”, with #Fuc­king­wall promp­tly beco­ming one of the top tren­ding hash­tags on Pre­si­dent Trump’s favou­ri­te social media. It is also worth men­tio­ning that this could be only the begin­ning of a serious tra­de war, as Mr. Fox has sta­ted that “Trump has brought back a very strong Mexi­can spi­rit and we’re rea­dy for the tra­de war”.

If the fir­st week of a Pre­si­den­cy can be a gui­de­li­ne for what’s to come, we can be qui­te cer­tain of the fol­lo­wing: Pre­si­dent Trump is dead-serious about rea­li­sing what he tal­ked about during his “hosti­le-takeo­ver” of the Repu­bli­can Par­ty. In other words, we are in for a ride.

Mar­co Canal

Aspi­ran­te eco­no­mi­sta, let­to­re, aman­te dei dibat­ti­ti intel­let­tua­li e gin&tonic, alpi­ni­sta, film il pane, viag­gio il vino e i Pink Floyd come reli­gio­ne. Pec­ca di insa­zia­bi­le curio­si­tà, bat­tu­ta faci­le, smo­da­ta ambi­zio­ne e deci­sio­ne. Alea iac­ta est.