Today is the first day of the rest of your life and the first day of the Trump administration’s second 100 days. We all now fly by the seat of our pants and measure money by the millions and time by the nanosecond. It’s no wonder Donald Trump is the president of the United States. He is a sign of the times – and here are 10 signals from the first 100 days.

 Tweets are cheap. Twitter use has skyrocketed under the Trump administration – no surprise given it’s the medium the most powerful person in the world uses as his microphone. The company added nine million users in the first quarter of 2017, thanks partly to the president’s 24 million followers. The bad news? Twitter reported its first drop in revenue since its initial public offering in 2013, posting sales of $548 million in the first quarter, down 7 percent from a year earlier.

 Nada your armada, mate. Remember when candidate Trump promised not to broadcast U.S. military strategy? About Iraq during the campaign, Trump said: “Every time we are going to attack somebody, we explain. We’re going to attack, we’ll be attacking at 3 (or) noon on March 25. I don’t know, unless you disagree with me, wouldn’t it be better if we were going to go after Mosul to not say anything and do it, as opposed to announcing – they’re announcing all over television they’re planning to attack Mosul?”

You tell me: Is it better that Trump said: “We’re sending an armada” to the Sea of Japan to rattle big American sabers in earshot of North Korean President Kim Jong-un, the 33-year-old who likes to play with big missiles – while U.S. warships sailed to Australia?

 The mother of all bombs slowly weeps. Afghanistan – the war-ravaged country occupied by the Soviets, caught in brutal civil war, ruled viciously by the Taliban and then estranged from the U.S. – knows not what a post-war era looks like. Two weeks ago, the United States dropped a 21,600-pound, $170,000 bomb on a tiny village nestled between two forested hills and home to Afghan families with the hope to take out an old tunnel system used by the Islamic State. Is it good news or the fake news that 94 Islamic State fighters were killed?

 His life matters. Trump was the keynote speaker at the annual meeting of the National Rifle Association on Friday, the first president since Ronald Reagan to address the gun lobby that poured $52 million into Republican coffers in the last election, and guess what? No guns allowed in the arena, said the Secret Service. The rights of the people to keep and bear arms can be infringed and ignored now that President Obama is out of the White House.

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 Gorsuch Snorsuch. The monotone, WASPy “originalist” schooled at Oxford, Columbia and Harvard gave the nation its first good nap since the election during his confirmation hearings. “Boring Neil Gorsuch,” according to the American Conservative, is “a mundane embrace of standard conservative principles. If you had a team of scientists build the perfect Republican judicial nominee in a lab, they would come up with this guy.” Ho hum.

• Fake news makes real money. When Trump speaks of the “failing” New York Times, he’s talking about a company that has seen “a net increase of approximately 132,000 paid subscriptions to our news products,” Times CEO Mark Thompson told CNBC, representing a dramatic rate of growth over the same period one year ago. Stock prices at public media companies like the Times have soared since Trump has become president. The S&P 500 media index gained 9.4 percent in the first quarter, led by high-profile Viacom, up 32.8 percent, 21st Century Fox, up 15.5 percent and Disney, up 8.8 percent. And left-leaning Rachel Maddow is beating Fox News in Nielson ratings.

• Breach of the peace and distracted humpbacks. Since Trump was elected president, scientists have reported that baby humpback whales whisper to their mothers. Last week, government scientist also declared an “unusual mortality event,” geek jargon for the unexplained death of large numbers of these big beasts that delight mariners by jumping out of the water. Many of these massive marine mammals are crashing into boats or failing to get out of harm’s way. Meanwhile, hundreds of right whales are gathering off the coast of Cape Cod. Something fishy?

• Bloodshed makes all lines red in Syria. After suggesting he would, Obama didn’t bomb Syria as punishment for using chemical weapons on its people after Congress refused to authorize such a bombing. President Bashar al-Assad remained in power and continued to terrorize and brutally kill innocent Syrians. Trump did bomb Syria, without congressional approval, as punishment for using chemical weapons on its people, after promising on the campaign trail he would stay out of Syria. The Washington Post reports Trump tweeting on June 15, 2013: “We should stay the hell out of Syria, the ‘rebels’ are just as bad as the current regime. WHAT WILL WE GET FOR OUR LIVES AND $ BILLIONS? ZERO.” Later that summer, Trump said Obama should seek Congress’s permission before taking action. In September 2013, Trump tweeted: “The only reason President Obama wants to attack Syria is to save face over his very dumb RED LINE statement. Do NOT attack Syria, fix U.S.A.”

Bomb or no bomb: Assad is still president and killing people. Now what?

 Chump change. Congress voted to keep the government open for a week.

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 Some Democrats are tough and Obama still cares. Trump is realizing it’s a lot harder than he thought to be president and get things done in Washington. Trump can’t even get things undone – like repealing Obamacare. Politics is a contact sport, and governing is not for sissies.

“You go through the gate. If the gate’s closed, you go over the fence. If the fence is too high, we’ll pole vault. If that doesn’t work, we’ll parachute in. But we are going to get health care reform passed for the American people,” then 70-year-old Nancy Pelosi said before passing landmark legislation that provides health insurance for over 10 million Americans. If Trump wants to get things done in the next 100 days, he needs to start working with the right people.

Cynthia Dill is a civil rights lawyer and former state senator. She can be contacted at:

dillesquire@gmail.com

Twitter: dillesquire


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