Although it’s not even been a week since Donald J. Trump has been president, he and his people have been quite… busy.
From declaring himself supreme leader and forging ahead on two extremely controversial pipeline projects to his surrogates playing a couple of rounds of Fun with Orwellianism, he and his administration have been reshaping things and making good on promises he shouted at rallies, and they’re doing so at breakneck speed.
Sure, that wall his early supporters famously championed via ominous chants, the one that Mexico is supposed to pay for, like, after America pays for it first, is not exactly shovel-ready.
But here are some of the things that have somehow occurred since Friday that make one wonder not whether this is all a movie, but whether its director is Kubrick or Lynch.
!) Not long after he officially becomes president, Trump sits at the Oval Office desk and signs several executive orders. Though a couple are procedural and pertain to the confirmation of his cabinet nominees, he signs a proclamation declaring Jan. 20 “National Day of Patriotic Devotion” since that is the day he was inaugurated. It is still unclear whether Kim Jong Un will sue for intellectual property theft.
!!) Despite photographic evidence demonstrating the contrary, he refuses to acknowledge that more people were in attendance at his predecessor’s inauguration than were at his, and bars the National Park Service, which tweeted the initial side-by-side comparison of the two events, from social media (though on Tuesday night, some badass rebel out at Badlands National Park tweets about climate change via the park account).
!!!) On Sunday, his surrogates do battle with the media. Press secretary Sean Spicer flat-out lies to the press, presumptively because he can’t stand to see his boss cry.
!!!!) Kellyanne Conway, Trump’s former campaign manager who’s now a senior advisor, causes a spike in Amazon sales of George Orwell’s book1984 on Sunday when she defends Spicer’s lie about about the inauguration crowd size, saying the assertion that Trump drew a record crowd was not a falsehood, but an “alternative fact.” She also threatens to stop granting interviews to Meet the Press‘s Chuck Todd because ohmygoditsreallyhappening.
!!!!!) At a meeting with intelligence officials (whom he recently compared to Nazi Germany in a tweet), Trump refers to his “running war” with the press, given how they spend all that time doing the jobs they exist to do.
!!!!!!) Surrounded by top male advisors, Trump reinstates the ‘global gag’ rule, which takes U.S. aid away from any overseas non-governmental organization that even utters the word abortion to a client or patient. These agencies provide crucial health screenings — cancer, HIV and the like — as well as birth control. Reagan initially adopted this rule. Presidents Clinton and Obama each rescinded it, but Presidents Bush II and Trump brought it back because, come on, where else is the next generation of child soldiers going to come from?
!!!!!!!) The internet, thankfully, unearths multiple bizarre tweets Spicer wrote over the course of several years repeatedly blasting the frozen dessert Dippin’ Dots for not really being “the ice cream of the future” as it so proclaims in advertising and marketing materials. Officials from Dippin’ Dots attempt to extend an olive branch, but it’s unclear whether Spicer will accept.
!!!!!!!!) After getting Bernie bros all excited by officially withdrawing from the Trans-Pacific Partnership, Trump signs executive orders that bring back two extremely controversial pipelines out West, the Keystone Pipeline and the Dakota Access Pipeline.
!!!!!!!!!) He makes the Environmental Protection Agency halt all social media updates and bars them from talking to the press, and there are reports of similar decrees for other federal agencies. He also puts a stop to all EPA contracts, hiring and interagency agreements in case any of the science they do gets in the way of mining, extraction, development or anything else that typically tears up and/or contaminates parts of the planet.
!!!!!!!!!!) Trump says he only lost the popular vote by 3 million because at least 3 million “illegals” voted illegally despite a complete lack of evidence.
Bonus: Then, there’s this. At least there’s that.
This article appears in Jan 19-26, 2017.
