Presidents often seem to have a track record for creating arbitrary laws and bans, making grandiose announcements that serve as political distractions. These divert the public’s attention from more controversial issues, such as defunding Medicare or after-school programs.

President Donald Trump’s recent ban on allowing transgender individuals to enter the military seems to be another political distraction. His tactic was to create a controversy that captured the public’s attention, but that, in the grand scheme of things, will have very little effect on the health of the country. He created public turmoil that the media latched onto, allowing him to fly under the radar as he begun to initiate and execute other items on his agenda.

Facebook was littered with articles discussing the ban. The decision to ban transgender individuals in the military was for the purpose of saving the minuscule amount of just $4.2 million to $5.6 million. This is only 0.04 to 0.13 percent of the military health-care spending budget as a whole. When the amount spent on transgender individual’s health care is compared to the entire expenditure of the Department of Defense as a whole, which is about $640 billion, the percentage drops a meager ten-thousandths of a percent. So why would Trump make a decision that has such little effect on the military, and would, in fact, probably cost more money, time and energy in the end to re-train the replacements of these highly-qualified military members? It was simply a diversion tactic to distract from the legislative decisions being made by Congress during that time.

This decision was made in the midst of the GOP’s attempt to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act. Trump’s diversion focused media attention on something other than the important health care votes taking place in the Senate at the time. Trump is a huge fan of political diversion; we can see that in the large amount of failed promises he declares he will follow through with. Most of Trump’s announcements have very little chance of actually being implemented.

On top of that, the military transgender ban is a decision favored by many of the Republicans who voted Trump into office. His announcement played to his base and potentially strengthened his standing.

I strongly believe that the minuscule effect this ban has on our country and its essentially nonexistent deduction from our economic spending demonstrate that Trump was simply creating a facade to distract people from the real concerns and issues of this country.

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