We begin today’s roundup with Benjy Sarlin at NBC News:
One month in, Donald Trump's presidency looks much like his campaign: a continual series of crises.
Trump's formula worked in the campaign and led to his surprise victory. So far, however, his administration is having trouble turning his election promises into a functioning government.
Trump has been confronted with a series of administrative crises while struggling to move the ball on key policy priorities. [...] The White House has also been bogged down in side battles over such issues as the size of the crowd at his inauguration to voter fraud conspiracies, sapping attention and draining aides.
Being president is hard work, especially when you choose to go golfing six times in a month:
President Donald Trump has made visiting his Florida golf courses a near every-weekend habit in the first month of his administration, and his aides are trying to obscure whether Trump is actually golfing during the visits. [...] "I'm going to be working for you, I'm not going to have time to go play golf," Trump said at the time. Trump has visited his two golf courses near his Mar-a-Lago estate -- Trump International Golf Course in West Palm Beach and Trump National Golf Course in Jupiter -- six times in his first month in office.
Susan Page at USA Today:
One month after his inauguration, President Trump has seen his approval ratings sag and the political divisions of his election deepen.
A new president's traditional honeymoon? It's nowhere in sight. [...]
Unlike other new presidents, however, Trump hasn't expanded his appeal to include those who didn't help elect him. Just 8% of Democrats approve of the job he's doing, by far the lowest standing for any modern president from the opposition party.
Overall, Trump's approval ratings this month in traditional surveys taken by telephone interviewers range from 39% in the Pew Poll to 48% in a Fox News poll. His disapproval ratings range from 56% in Pew to 47% in Fox.
Joe Peyronnin at The Huffington Post:
So far, the Trump transition has been ineptly problematic. The incompetent rolling out of Trump’s travel ban, which appeared to target Muslims, caused enormous chaos and frustration at the nation’s airports. The intensified rounding up of immigrants illegally in the U.S. has been heartless and perplexing. The shaky efforts to “repeal and immediately replace” the Affordable Care Act have mobilized thousands of Obamacare supporters to protest at town halls throughout the country.
Benjamin Mullin at Poynter:
[T]he fledgling Trump presidency has also imparted several important lessons about the way journalism should be practiced over the next four to eight years. Below are five of the biggest.
Don't let social media set the agenda
As he did during the campaign, President Trump tweets nearly ever morning between the hours of 4 a.m. and 11 a.m. Often, the tweets focus on his grievances against the media or a particular story he finds objectionable.
While President Trump's Twitter feed is fodder for quick stories about his feuds against various individuals and institutions, those articles are usually trivial and lack the heft of serious investigative journalism. Rather than letting Trump set the agenda from his phone, why not respond to misinformation on social media and dispatch reporters and editors to cover more consequential stories?
Meanwhile, as Catherine Rampell writes, the Trump White house is already “cooking the books”:
Astonishingly, the White House still hasn’t released details for any of the major economic initiatives Trump promised during the campaign (a “terrific” Obamacare replacement, a top-to-bottom tax overhaul, massive infrastructure investment). But thanks to recent leaks about the administration’s economic book-cooking, we at least know that whatever Trump ultimately proposes will be very, very expensive. [...]
As the Wall Street Journal first reported (and as I’ve independently confirmed through my own sources), the Trump transition team instead ordered CEA staffers to predict sustained economic growth of 3 to 3.5 percent. The staffers were then directed to backfill all the other numbers in their models to produce these growth rates.
And, on a final note, don’t miss this piece by Edward Price, who “worked at the CIA from 2006 until this month, most recently as the spokesman for the National Security Council”:
Despite working proudly for Republican and Democratic presidents, I reluctantly concluded that I cannot in good faith serve this administration as an intelligence professional.
This was not a decision I made lightly. [...] Trump’s actions in office have been even more disturbing. His visit to CIA headquarters on his first full day in office, an overture designed to repair relations, was undone by his ego and bluster. Standing in front of a memorial to the CIA’s fallen officers, he seemed to be addressing the cameras and reporters in the room, rather than the agency personnel in front of them, bragging about his inauguration crowd the previous day. Whether delusional or deceitful, these were not the remarks many of my former colleagues and I wanted to hear from our new commander in chief. I couldn’t help but reflect on the stark contrast between the bombast of the new president and the quiet dedication of a mentor — a courageous, dedicated professional — who is memorialized on that wall. I know others at CIA felt similarly.