If you asked President Trump how he’d grade his performance during the first week of his administration, he’d likely give himself an A or a A-. After all, he hit the ground running and has gone to work right away at cutting burdensome federal regulations, inviting the company administering the Keystone XL pipeline project to send in a new application, and ordering Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis to present a plan and any additional authority he may need to defeat the Islamic State.
Trump deserves nothing short of a D-, however, on his hallmark issues: decreasing immigration and toughening the screening and vetting process for those trying to enter from high-risk countries. The only reason he doesn’t get an F is because there weren’t any stampedes in airports.
The way the administration has executed the executive order on “extreme vetting” has been about as unorganized and embarrassing as President George W. Bush’s response to Hurricane Katrina.
Put aside for the moment the five judicial stays that effectively prohibit immigration and border patrol agents from sending new Muslim arrivals already in U.S. airports back on return flights. Forget about the public relations catastrophe, where stories have popped up hourly of people who hold valid visas and travel documents but aren’t allowed to board their planes. Ignore the massive demonstrations in some of the nation’s biggest airports, as well as the millions of Americans who see in Trump’s executive order an unconstitutional, unilateral and ideologically rigid policy.
Instead, focus on the fact that the Trump administration appeared wildly unprepared for the fallout it would receive and for the cluelessness that enveloped the agents on the ground tasked with implementing the new policy.
Border patrol agents and Homeland Security employees reportedly didn’t receive the full copy of the executive order until the day Trump signed it. Mattis and Secretary of Homeland Security John Kelly were kept in the dark. According to the the New York Times, Trump was signing the executive order at the same time that Kelly was on a conference call with the White House trying to understand it. White House staff rushed the directive, apparently so confident in their own legal and policy ability they didn’t think it was necessary to brief the man whose department would be responsible for enforcing entry restrictions.
That’s about as brilliant as planning a war without the advice of the defense secretary, Joint Chiefs of Staff, and combatant commanders.
The result is what we saw on Saturday night: pandemonium at airports, green-card holders prevented from getting back to their homes and their families, and residents from seven Muslim countries detained upon arrival and kept in a holding area. Trump’s confidence on Saturday that implementation was going wonderfully is the best example one can find of a president and his staff detached from what was really going on.
If Trump has learned anything during his first week in office, it’s that a fast-track process on issues as controversial as keeping 130 million people from entering the U.S. on a temporary basis is no way to run a government. The Trump administration must learn from this mistake, and learn fast.
Daniel DePetris (@DanDePetris) is a contributor to the Washington Examiner’s Beltway Confidential blog. He is a fellow at Defense Priorities. If you would like to write an op-ed for the Washington Examiner, please read our guidelines on submissions here.
