Regardless of your political convictions, I think all of us on both sides of the aisle can agree that Donald Trump has definitely stayed busy in his first week and a half as president.
Trump has signed more than a dozen executive actions so far, all being met with the usual amount of outrage and fear mongering that we have come to expect at this point. It cannot be denied that the president has done some disagreeable things during his short tenure so far, but I would advise people to not rush to overly negative judgments just yet.
To avoid coming across as some sort of apologist for the president I will start with criticism. “Alternative facts” may be the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard. Many would agree with me, and while Trump himself did not say this, he should be proactive in preventing such blatant ignorance from being associated with his administration.Conveying maturity should also be a goal for the Commander in Chief, and one practical way to start doing that is to stop showing so much concern about crowd size. Trump’s insecurity that his inauguration crowd may not have been as big as President Obama’s just makes it look like he’s compensating for something. His relationship with Vladimir Putin needs a dose of transparency as well.
Everyone also needs to remember that most of Trump’s executive actions do not actually do anything. The orders he signed to start the construction of the border wall, increase border patrol, and “minimize the unwarranted economic and regulatory burdens” of the Affordable Care Act are essentially just sheets of paper.
What Trump is actually after is making a statement. And that statement I would say needs to be made in Washington. He is signaling that “the times they are a changin’”. And they need to. Our government has frankly become an insufferable monster of corruption and two-faced politics; something I heard at the dinner table growing up was that we “ought to just throw them all out and start over”. This is the closest thing we have to doing that. The political establishment that has protected this disappointing status quo for so long should be afraid, and Trump has made that happen. He is doing some shooting from the hip in the process though, so I would encourage people that some of his attacks, like cutting funding for NPR and PBS or banning social media accounts for the EPA and NASA, will most likely not last.  
And now the Immigration Ban. All I would say is everyone should react with less outrage and attempt to understand the nuances of this issue. Of course we should all want to accept with open arms those who have been downtrodden and oppressed. But only seeing the refugee crisis as that is over-simplifying the issue. The fact of the matter is that allowing large numbers of people from this region has proven to be very dangerous. Look at Europe and the awful acts of terrorism that have occurred in the last few years there. Their complete open door policy to refugees and immigrants from the Middle East is to blame. And so I support the ban — which, remember only lasts for 90 days — until a long-term policy that protects our national security can be found.
Matthew Jacobs is a political science senior and news reporter for The Battalion.