The Trump Administration: A Recap of the Summer

 
Staff Shakeup
The Trump Administration has gone through several staff changes over that past few months of the summer, including Chief of Staff, Press Secretary, Chief Strategist, and Communications Director. Trump also fired James Comey, Director of the FBI in June.
Donald Trump Jr’s Leaked Emails
In a move that shocked the nation, emails linking Trump’s campaign to Russia were leaked by none other than Trump’s son in an attempt to be “totally transparent”. The series of emails describe the setting up of a meeting between Trump Jr. and Robert Goldstone  to discuss incriminating details about Hillary Clinton to help Trump’s campaign during the election. Although both parties have said that there was actually no information related to helping the campaign shared, many are still skeptical.
“The Crown prosecutor of Russia met with his father Aras this morning and in their meeting offered to provide the Trump campaign with some official documents and information that would incriminate Hillary and her dealings with Russia and would be very useful to your father.
This is obviously very high level and sensitive information but is part of Russia and its government’s support for Mr. Trump – helped along by Aras and Emin.”
Reinstating the Ban on Transgender Troops
On Friday, Aug. 25, Trump signed a bill that would deny an Obama-era directive to allow transgender individuals to openly serve in the military. The Trump administration, despite outcries that Trump had done the exact opposite of his claims in his campaign to protect LGBTQ individuals, denied that the memo amounted to discrimination.
“As president, I will do everything in my power to protect LGBTQ citizens from the violence and oppression of a hateful foreign ideology,” Trump said at the Republican National Convention in 2016.
Charlottesville
Following the clashes in Charlottesville Virginia at a white supremacist rally where a woman named Heather Heyer was killed by a follower of the rally who drove a car into a crowd of protesters, Trump’s remarks of “violence on both sides” rather than outright condemning the rally sparked controversy across the nation. After facing criticism from both lawmakers and citizens, Trump denounced white supremacy, the KKK , neo-Nazis and other groups that participated in the rally a day later. He defended his statement of violence on both sides by saying that there was no way to make a correct statement that early.