Trumps Impulses Now Carry the Force of the Presidency President

[applegrove]

https://mobile.nytimes.com/2017/01/25/us/politics/donald-trump-presidency.html

by Peter Baker at the NYTimes

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Yet some of his own advisers also privately worry about his penchant for picking unnecessary fights and drifting off message. They talk about taking away his telephone or canceling his Twitter account, only to be dismissed by a president intent on keeping his own outlets to the world.

On the blueprint mapped out by the White House, Wednesday was supposed to be a day devoted to national security. The president signed executive action intended to begin the process of building his promised wall on the Mexican border, and he prepared other orders to curb refugees from Middle Eastern countries.

Even these planned actions had the feel of someone rushing toward the sound of gunfire. Like other orders signed in recent days, they were hurriedly prepared with many questions left unanswered, such as where the money for the wall will come from assuming Mexico does not cut a check as Mr. Trump has demanded. And the leak of a draft order reinstating black-site prisons and harsh interrogation techniques consumed more attention despite White House disavowals.

Amid this flurry of activity that has attempted to reverse the Obama administration’s policy on health care, the environment, trade, immigration, national security and housing in just five days came the president’s spontaneous forays into controversy, provoked by the chyrons on his television screen.

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