Here Are Donald Trump's 10 Best Days As President

The term "ham-handed" fits the Trump administration like a ham-handed glove, what with its staffing decisions, its foreign policy, its infrastructure weeks, its cover-ups, Sean Spicer's suit tailoring -- the list goes on. On May 31, the president did the piggish term real justice when his (very large) ham-hands accidentally tweeted the year's most memorable neologism.  

"Despite the constant negative press," President Trump tweeted, "covfefe." 
That was it; it stopped there. It was likely a typo -- or was it? Covfefe's sound -- cove-fey-fey -- gave it a playful ring, and its placement in the sentence made it read like an imperative clause.

Maybe it was a hakuna matata thing? Perhaps the leader of the free world was channeling the feel-good mantra of another culture, drawing upon its wisdom to implore his countrymen to look on the bright side? What an unexpected departure that would be -- and what could be a more welcomed change from a man whose understanding of foreign cultures is about as textured and culturally sensitive as a Street Fighter character selection screen?

But… of course not. "Covfefe" was almost certainly a typo -- despite Sean Spicer's claim to the press that "the president and a small group of people know exactly what he meant." But it was the right accident at the right time, as if FDR warned a weary nation that "The only thing we have to fear is gjhpq39f;a;iw" -- it might not have made sense, but you would've gotten the gist.

In this regard, the president was doing what all great presidents do: giving us words -- or, in this case, a word -- to help us through trying times.   
Work getting you down? Covfefe. Bad weather keeping you inside? Covfefe. President using a microblogging service to send hostile messages to the press rather than leading the free world? Covfefe.

To be sure, the president ruined Christmas for a lot of people -- those facing deportation or who were without health insurance for the first time in years, for example -- but the president didn't do much that day to make it worse. Yes, there was his usual yammering about saying "Merry Christmas" instead of "Happy holidays," but who among us didn't fear that the most peaceful day of the year would be ruined by push alerts informing us that the commander in chief told some kid that NORAD's Santa tracker isn't actually real?

But he didn't. Somehow, President Trump found it in himself to let the country have its Christmas. For a few blissful hours, all of it -- the Mueller investigation, the Twitter taunts, the TV habit, his odd capitalization of letters -- was out of our minds. It didn't matter. What mattered was a country in its pajamas, watching its kids ruin its flooring with freshly unwrapped hoverboards and wondering how to make a thank you note for a $10 Starbucks gift card sound sincere.  

A true Christmas miracle.

The orb -- the orb! Do you remember the orb? Where were you when you first learned about the orb? How do you talk to your children about the orb? What do you think the orb is doing right now? "Probably doing breathing exercises and listening to Sting's solo work" is the correct answer, but no matter.

To recap: during Trump's visit to Saudi Arabia in May, the country's monarch, King Salman, led Trump and President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi of Egypt on a tour of his government's new Global Center for Combating Extremist Ideology. At one point, the sovereign led the two leaders to a luminous globe set atop a very dramatic-looking pedestal -- which looked less like a decorative entreaty for world peace and more like something from Al Pacino's office in "The Devil's Advocate." For several uncomfortable minutes, the three rulers placed their hands on the globe -- or "orb," as it quickly became known on social media.

This was supposed to be about friendship among nations, but it really just answered the question of what UN General Assembly meetings would be like if its attendees dropped a bunch of molly and cranked up some Enya.
It was awesome, and what's more, Trump touched something only after being given permission to do so -- behavior that we need to encourage.

Remember the SATs? Remember how anxious you were as you shuffled into your high school gymnasium equipped with only a TI-83 and a plastic bag of No. 2 pencils? Remember every synapse in your brain throbbing with nervous anticipation as the proctor, your otherwise friendly English teacher, intoned the guidelines with cruel detachment? Remember the awful catharsis when you were finally permitted to open your test booklet, and the moment time stood still as you scanned its single page on which was stamped, in giant letters, "ARE YOU A STABLE GENIUS? YES [ ] NO[ ]"?
 x
You probably didn't, but our president might, as he seems to think that to measure a person's knowledge, intellect or psychological bearing, one merely need ask if that person is a "stable genius."

"I think that would qualify as not smart, but genius," the president tweeted, "and a very stable genius at that!”

The commander in chief was responding to journalist Michael Wolff's controversial new book, Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House, in which he reports that many of the president's aides have been alarmed by what they see as Trump's declining neurological health.

Another president beset by such reports might take steps to publicly demonstrate their mental acuity -- perhaps through a probing sit-down interview or, given our politics, correctly spelling the word "potato."  This president, on the other hand, decided to self-publish the following words: "I think [my accomplishments] would qualify as not smart, but genius," which only seemed to make the problem worse.

None of this necessarily made for a great day in the Trump administration, but for the rest of us, we could affirm that even if we weren't smarter than the president of the United States, we were probably more stable.

On the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month of 1918, the guns fell silent across Europe as its leaders finally extricated their countries from the madness and destruction of the Great War.

On the 11th day of the 11th month of 2017, America's leader called North Korea's leader "short and fat."

Nov. 11 is a very auspicious day.

During Trump's two-week tour of Asia, the North Korean government released a statement criticizing the 45th president as a "dotard," prompting Trump to tweet, "Why would Kim Jong-un insult me by calling me "old," when I would NEVER call him "short and fat?" Oh well, I try so hard to be his friend - and maybe someday that will happen!"

Donald Trump's administration has been marked by a slew of foreign policy missteps -- from his inability to get Mexico to "pay for the wall" to a puzzling cancellation of a trip to Britain to a State Department that is as heavily staffed as a Party City a week after Halloween.

However, no one piece of diplomacy encapsulated Trump's approach to foreign affairs quite like his Nov. 11 broadside against North Korea's autocrat: It was juvenile, attention-seeking and is the sort of thing that could get us all blown up.  

Indeed, on Nov. 11, the Trump Doctrine was well and truly formulated, which was good, as he also wrote that day that he wants to "solve North Korea, Syria, Ukraine, terrorism."

In the criminal justice system, the people are represented by two separate yet equally important groups: the police, who investigate crime, and the district attorneys, who prosecute the offenders. Oh, and there's also a guy who potentially ruins the prosecutors' case by tweeting about it. This is that guy's story.

***DUN DUN***

A day after a man mowed down a group of pedestrians in Lower Manhattan, the president did what presidents always do after terrorist attacks: He potentially ruined the prosecutors' case.

"NYC terrorist was happy as he asked to hang ISIS flag in his hospital room," Trump tweeted. "He killed 8 people, badly injured 12. SHOULD GET DEATH PENALTY!"

As was pointed out in a number of outlets, this kind of public posturing by a leading government official can actually undermine a prosecution.

And just like that, President Trump, a real law-and-order politician if there ever was one, stumbled upon a new type of presidential pardon: the mistrial tweet. Truly a thrilling constitutional development to behold.

Peace is the greatest gift a leader can bestow on a nation, and though the United States remained embroiled in a number of conflicts this last year, Americans were treated to a different kind of harmony on Thursday, June 8: President Trump didn't tweet.

That's right: for 2,753 glorious minutes starting early Wednesday, June 7, and ending early Friday, June 9, the president summoned a level of self-restraint that, frankly, none of us thought he possessed. If you happened to see an unusually large number of woodland creatures emerging into forest clearings that day, or if your urge to stockpile beans inexplicably subsided, now you know why.

The commander in chief had taken another similarly long social media breather while president, but that was over a weekend, a time when it's pretty obvious the guy isn't super keen on doing anything other than golfing.

This remarkable midweek hiatus was likely a response to FBI Director James Comey's testimony before the Senate Intelligence Committee about the circumstances surrounding his firing in May. Comey had told the panel he believed the president relieved him of his duties in order to stymie the investigation into Russia's involvement in the 2016 presidential campaign. It's not exactly beyond the pale for this president to implicate himself through the microblogging service, so perhaps someone at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. did the smart thing and taped the president's phone between his shoulder blades.

That said, as self-restraint goes, the president's achievement isn't terribly impressive. "Not causing a constitutional crisis by tweeting" falls somewhere between "aiming for the toilet while peeing" and "not punching people" as basic behavior we can and should expect from humans. Still, the president did give his people a little peace and quiet for nearly 46 hours in June, and for that we are grateful.

It would take some time to go public, but our worst fears about Donald Trump died when he urged then-FBI Director James Comey to drop his investigation of national security adviser Michael Flynn's associations.

"I hope you can see your way clear to letting this go, to letting Flynn go," Comey later reported the president as saying. "He is a good guy. I hope you can let this go."

This followed a Jan. 27 meeting between the two in which Trump told Comey, "I need loyalty. I expect loyalty."

That Trump's request occured on Valentine's Day was almost too perfect, as he seemed to apply the same amount of subtly and forbearance to obstructing justice as he does to his love life. Unfortunately for the president, his "when you're a star they let you do it” ethos doesn't really pan out when going toe-to-toe with the FBI.

It might seem counterintuitive that the president attempting to derail an investigation into the top levels of his administration would mark the moment our worst fears were alleviated, but the moment made something very clear: The Trump administration may do a lot of damage, but it isn't going to destroy this democracy -- it simply isn't talented enough. It has no creep. 

This isn't to discount the profound impact Trump and his crew are having on the presidency, the country and our collective faith in institutions, or the potential for more damage yet undone. However when you think back to immediately after Trump's election and some of the fears that were being voiced about his potential impact on our very way of governance, it becomes clear that for all the comparisons to Richard Nixon, this White House can't live up to that administration's calculating deviousness.
This White House isn't occupied by a group of Machiavellian operators bending the executive branch to their will, but rather a bunch of buffoons supremely out of their depth, lurching from one thing to the next like a group of rip-roaring drunks playing Pokemon Go.

Should this administration implode in a series of indictments and resignations, its criminality won't be placed alongside Nixon's in the pantheon of bad actors, but between the Florida man who tried to disguise himself at night by smearing permanent marker on his face and the bank robber who was arrested after police spotted his L.A. Lights.

Trump spends a good amount of his time in Florida, and this day, perhaps more than any other, crystallized the fact that America had elected Florida Man.

Donald Trump was president for only 12 hours.

What are numbers, really? Just easily quantifiable things made up by the fake news media, of course. Addition is just an ongoing conspiracy of those numbers organized by the deep state.

That sentiment defined the first full day of the Trump administration, which was deeply irked by the cold hard facts that not as many people attended now-President Trump's inauguration as had now-former President Obama's. Sean Spicer, seeking to handle this situation, appeared in the White House Briefing Room with the petrified, overwhelmed look of a deer in the headlights -- actually, not just a deer in the headlights, but a deer in the headlights who is also stoned out of its mind and was just informed that one day the universe will expand so much that it will dissolve into the ether.

A very alarmed-looking Spicer called media reports about the crowd size “deliberately false reporting," then proceeded to angrily mumble something about magnetometers and lawn coverings. Spicer's performance that day was one to remember: a potent cocktail of confusion, anger and comedic overconfidence -- a mixture the country would grow familiar with over the coming weeks and months.
 
But even as Spicer's alternative facts helped set the stage for a year of falsehoods and deception, something more encouraging was transpiring blocks away. Hundreds of thousands of women and their allies gathered on the Washington Mall for the Women's March, an event that would kickstart a year of activism and resistance.

Much and more has been written about the rally and its effects, but it was actually a very good day for our consent-challenged commander in chief: In a departure for Donald "grab 'em by the pussy Trump, women -- literally hundreds of thousands of them -- voluntarily showed up at his doorstep.