The only reason I actually care at all is the world's reaction. Like, if we could piss off just a few people here and there, that would be great. But everyone all at once is sort of a hard thing to get over. We aren't even two weeks in to this bad boy yet.
100% agree on freaking out every time the POTUS does something. We just have to get to a spot like we did with the second Bush- we know POTUS is going to say some ridiculous crap. He's bound to screw up. We all know it. Just accept that and let's see if we can get to a place where we can move this ship forward, regardless of the idiot captain.
I care about the impact this has on largely innocent people - refugees, greencard holders, asylum seekers, and general participants in our immigration process. A lot of really sad stories - to me similar to the stuff with the global gag rule - ideologically motivated moves with almost entirely negative consequences from a policy standpoint, and almost all for show.
But I agree with your and
@TLDR20 point that it's not really a huge deal from a future of the country standpoint. We're talking about a negligible amount of people when you look at the entire spectrum of our immigration policy and as sad as many of the stories are it's not enough people to have any impact on economic growth or international agreements. Similarly that protests are affecting jack and shit - and are going to burn out very quickly at this stage.
As I look at it if I take the assumption it's not just full-speed incompetence maybe that's the point. The President is able to continue to fire up his core supporters by showing he's serious in his anti-immigrant, anti-trade, anti-Islam positions from the campaign trail - without seriously impacting any real substantive policy changes, which he'll need congress to enact. Simultaneously the opposition gets further into protest fatigue - it's been 10 days, no way this level of outrage can be maintained no matter what the President does - and the President is very rapidly able to essentially do a loyalty test inside the government. Actions like this, his position on Russian hacking, and his climate change denial have pretty quickly identified for the incoming administration exactly where the institutional resistance to his policy will manifest - regulatory agencies, science-based agencies, the IC, and state dept. In that sense it makes even more sense the moves he's making with who he is appointing by-and-large (outsiders who have expressed disdain or a desire to abolish the agencies they're taking over) and the shifts he's making in the NSC and executive decision-making apparatus.
Still, as effective as those tactical moves might be in getting an administration-friendly executive branch lined up there's a huge cost. The President might not have to run for re-election for 4 more years but congress and one third of the senate do. All the President's actions so far have really hardened opposition to him in the Democratic party - which could have been motivated to work with him in some of his stated infrastructure and anti-corruption efforts at the least. It's also going to further alienate/scare any vulnerable Republicans in the same vein.
I guess though on the other side of that calculus there is an argument to be made the level of anger and protests on the left make it very difficult for any Democrats to reach across the isle - regardless of the merits of specific legislation. Further, the midterm map is generically very solid for the Republican party - and they've traditionally done very well by counting on core constituency turn-out for Republicans. President Trump got solid support from that constituency during the Presidential election (evangelicals, traditional conservative voters, older voters). Further, the evidence is mixed that a strong protest movement on the left actually translates to success at the ballot box - it certainly didn't in the 60s and 70s in the protests and riots mentioned earlier, although granted there were a variety of factors at that time.
