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The Boston GlobeCommentary January 29, 2017 Fariborz S. Fatemi

There has not been much snow in Washington, instead we havea blizzard of executive orders. Like acarnival barker, Donald Trump is using smoke and mirrors to satisfy thepromises to his backers. He and his staff are too ignorant to understand whathe can and cannot do by executive order. Therefore, poorly thought out andwritten, these orders only sew confusion and chaos. Even if they were real,there is no infrastructure. There are few cabinet secretaries or their staff toimplement them. It’s all symbolism. Some examples: The Affordable Care Act can only be changedby legislation, not his executive order. The Trans-Pacific Partnership Treaty did not need an executive order. Itwas a dead issue since the Senate was not going to take it up or ratify it. Hisexecutive order to freeze federal hiring is meaningless and confusing. Wealready have the smallest federal workforce since the administration ofPresident Eisenhower, causing bottlenecks of service everywhere. Any smallerand nothing that the citizenry needs, ie., passports, questions to IRS, SocialSecurity, Medicare, etc., will get done. His animus against the federal workforce is misplaced. The swamp he needs to drain is thedysfunctional Congress controlled by his Republican Party that, like him, hasthe lowest approval ratings in history. His latest immigration order is laughable, targeting the wrongcountries. The hijackers of 9/11 weremostly Saudi and Egyptian citizens. Ifhe had read the reports from the US Treasury, he would know that “the epicenterof terrorism funding” is Saudi Arabia and the Gulf States. The Taliban of Afghanistan gave the architectof 9/11, Osama Bin Laden, sanctuary, as did the Pakistanis. None of thesecountries were named. Is it because ofhis business dealings? The look of dismay of his defense secretary, GeneralMattis, as Trump was signing the executive order said it all. Remember, Trumpknows more than the generals. Hecontinues with these meaningless executive orders so his backers may think heis doing something. Then they will not see that he is doing nothing because hedoes not know what to do. The reality is, he has spent most of his time lyingabout crowd sizes of his inauguration and lying about why he is a minoritypresident, having received three million fewer votes than Secretary Clinton.His staff makes excuses for him by explaining that he and they use “alternativefacts” which translated, is lying. Can it get any worse? Yes. How very sad foreveryone
A version of this is in the Financial Times.