Is Trump competent?

The shambles over Trump's failure to persuade his own party to support his health reform bill is not just a huge setback for him. It raises a number of very serious questions: is Trump a total liability as president? Is he incompetent? Are his main advisers complacent and incompetent? The answers to these questions are, yes probably or yes definitely. So much has gone wrong already, one wonders whether any of his promises made during the election campaign are going to bear fruit. I'm not saying that's a bad thing, in fact just the opposite, because most sensible intelligent people, American or otherwise, have no time for his extreme ideas, like banning Muslims from entering the country from certain parts of the world, building a wall along the border with Mexico etc etc. But the West, indeed the world, cannot afford to have an incompetent president in the White House. It's bad for all of us. But in the two months Trump has been sitting in the Oval Office, it has been a bit of a disaster. First of all, he thought he would start off with his travel ban idea. Well, that got thrown out by a constitution-minded federal judge, but in the process there was total chaos at all airports. Anyone with a name like Hussein or Mohammed, wherever they were coming from, whether from the banned list of countries or the Caribbean, got the frosty look from immigration and marched off to a small room for interrogation. Even retired American deputy chiefs of police got the same treatment for heaven's sake. What sort of damage did that do for the reputation of the United States as a humanitarian, welcoming, democratic society? But White House lawyers obviously told Trump, yes Mr President, of course you can do this, no federal judge would dare act against you. So off he went, half-cock, as they say, and ordered the ban, and immigration officers started doing the heavy-handed bit. Then Trump came up with a revised travel ban, leaving off Iraq from the list which must have been a huge relief for the US military commanders helping to prosecute the war against Isis in Mosul, but didn't really alleviate the problems at every port and airport as people continued to pour in, unsure whether they would be instantly deported or allowed in. Trump got bored with all of this and announced he was going to replace Obamacare and got his lackeys to draft a bill. Once again, it was all done half-cock. The bill was terrible, no one had thought it out properly. The only motivation for the Trumpcare alternative seemed to be to save money to pay for big tax cuts. He tried to pull the wool over the eyes of the Republican congressmen by announced it to be a wonderful bill but no one was fooled. It was rubbish. So many American citizens would be excluded from the bill's health coverage that it would be patently irresponsible for Congress to support it. And they didn't. Trump blamed the Democrats but it was the Republicans who defeated him. Of course the Democrats voted against it. Now Trump is bored with health as well and is turning to tax cuts. But with such incompetence and wrong-thinking coming out of the White House, what on earth will he do about tax? And will he be able to afford it, or, should I say, will the country be able to afford huge tax cuts? Perhaps Trump will just do away with the State Department. That should save some money, along with anything to do with protecting the environment. It's all beginning to look seriously worrying. I hope Trump is worried, not just angry.