The Trail of Broken Promises

The list of promises made by President-elect Trump during his campaign to become president of the United States that he now says he will or might break is growing so fast that it seems impossible to keep up with it.  However, here are a few.

Now, keep in mind, we don't know if President-elect Trump will actually break these promises.  The only thing we know for sure about President-elect Trump's thinking is that he lies.  Whether he was lying at the time he made the promises and never intended to keep them, or whether he is lying now when he says he will or might break them one cannot tell.  But, here's a partial list of the campaign promises we know he made that we know he says he will or might break.

He'll build a wall.  President-elect Trump began his presidential campaign by promising that, if elected, he would build a wall along the border between Mexico and the United States.  I don't know if he ever said exactly this, but it was clear that he promised to build a wall that would completely wall off Mexico from the United States.  Now, he says, he won't build a wall, because some of it will be a fence.  The promise was to build a wall, not a fence.  Almost all of my readers will have seen both walls and fences, and they will recognize the difference.  A fence is not a wall.

I have said this before, but, once again for the record, it breaks my hear to think of either a wall or a fence closing off the view and/or the access to the Rio Grande River through Big Bend National Park.  For those of you who have been there, you know that the view of and the access to the Rio Grande is one of the most magnificent aspects of Big Bend.  My President-elect has promised he will end that.  It breaks my heart.

Also, this isn't a promise he's broken, but it's a promise that President-elect almost surely cannot keep and almost surely knew he would be very unlike to keep the promise when he made it:  Mexico will pay for that wall.  After Mr. Trump met with the president of Mexico, the president of Mexico said that Mexico would never pay for the promised wall.

We'll keep out the Muslims.  During the campaign, Mr. Trump called for a complete and total ban on all Muslims entering the United States.  One cannot be sure that this was a promise, but it seemed like one at the time.

If it was a promise, then it was broken even before the election.  When asked about Muslims who were United States citizens trying to enter the country and elected officials of other countries who were Muslims trying to enter the country, Mr. Trump admitted that there would have to be exceptions to his blanket promise (ban?).  Later, when it was pointed out that a ban on someone entering the country based on their religion would probably be unconstitutional, Mr. Trump changed his promises (ban?) to one that would keep out people entering the United States from countries that had problems with terrorism.  (Would that include France?)  Then, when problems with that promises (ban?) were pointed out, Mr. Trump changed his promise (ban?) to "just" a registry of all immigrants to the United States of the Muslim faith.

He'll repeal Obamacare.  Many times during the campaign, Mr. Trump promised that if he were elected he would repeal Obamacare (the Affordable Care Act).  He even said on at least one occasion that he would do it as soon as he took office, on the very day, to be precise.  He said he would call a "special session" of congress to repeal Obamacare, even though the congress (according to the Supreme Court of the United States) has been in session continuously for many years and despite the fact that presidents don't call "special sessions" of congress.  That's something that governors do with or to state legislatures.

After meeting with President Obama for about 90 minutes, President-elect Trump said he might not repeal Obamacare, but, instead, might amend it.  By the way, that's exactly what Secretary Clinton said over and over during the campaign:  Don't repeal it.  Keep what's working and fix what's not.

He'll lock her up.  During the campaign, Mr. Trump promised many times that if he were elected president of the United States, he would lock up Secretary Clinton.  He often led or encouraged chants by his supporters to "lock her up."  He promised specifically that, if he were elected president, he would instruct his attorney general to appoint a special prosecutor to pursue the case(s) against Secretary Clinton.

When asked during a post-election interview whether he still intended to seek prosecution against Secretary Clinton, he said that he didn't want to hurt the Clintons.  They were good people.

He'll drain that swamp.  Many times during the presidential campaign, Mr. Trump promised that, if elected, he would go to Washington and drain the swamp.  It's not clear exactly what he meant by "drain the swamp."  It is, obviously a metaphor for something, but one cannot be sure exactly what.  Nevertheless, his supporters almost surely took it to mean that if he went to Washington as the president of the United States, that President Trump would appoint political outsiders to the federal government and end both the "revolving door" that lets government officials become lobbyists and then lets lobbyists become government officials and the influence of money in federal politics.

Despite his promise to drain the swamp, most of President-elect's transition team are political insiders and lobbyists.  The man he has appointed as his chief-of-staff is a political operative.  Most of the people he has appointed to be members of his cabinet are politicians and generals.

When asked by a reporter why his transition team was so thick with lobbyists, he told the reporter that there was nothing else he could do, that it was the lobbyists who knew how the system worked and he had to rely on them.  Which is, of course, what many of the political insiders before President-elect Trump have used as their excuse for including so many lobbyists in their transition teams and governments.

So much for draining the swamp.

America, you have been conned.