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The best advice I ever got was from a friend who told me: "Judge someone by what they do, not what they say."

With Donald Trump pinballing through press conferences like a cat on roller skates you'll never get any sense if you take what he says literally.

The chances are that, the more you wonder how mad a man has to be to insist God ordered the sun to shine on a sodden presidential parade which had more Portaloos than people, you'll go mad as well. You'll get sucked in, and end up insecure, half-crazed and fearful just like him.

You can't rely on what he says. So what's he actually DONE?

1. Changed zero laws

(Image: AFP)

Trump has been signing a flurry of executive orders, allowing pipelines, cancelling trade deals, and as of today banning refugees from troubled nations like Iraq and Yemen. He can't do much else, because despite being the most powerful man in the world the President of the USA cannot introduce legislation.

He has to get a member of Congress to sponsor a bill for him - and so far, Trump has not bothered to even start. No doubt someone's told him executive orders are exactly the same and a bit quicker. But all of the President's instructions can be overruled as unconstitutional by the Supreme Court, and cancelled or amended by a bill in Congress. It happens rarely, but with Trump that may change.

When it comes to something like banning refugees his orders won't hold. The USA is legally bound by the United Nations Refugees Convention which it signed in 1968, as well as a number of its own laws, to accept people fleeing persecution. As Trump is bound by the Constitution to "take care that the laws be faithfully executed", his signing of an order which directly flouts them is nothing but a pointless pretence of power.

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2. Abandoned Georgia

On January 2 the state of Georgia begged for help from the Federal Emergency Agency, following a tornado which left $50million of damage. This was followed by a series of back-to-back violent twisters and storms which killed 18 people this weekend alone. Nine counties have been declared disaster areas. One eye witness said: "It looked like God picked up the trailer park and threw it across the road into the woods."

On Sunday Trump said: "Georgia is a great state, great people … The tornadoes were vicious and powerful and strong and they suffered greatly. So we'll be helping out the state of Georgia.”

The last head of FEMA left office when Barack Obama did. Trump has yet to name a new one. Meanwhile, Georgia has one FEMA liaison officer at its operations centre. An estimated 90,000 people are without power in Georgia, Florida and Alabama, with more storms predicted.

3. Gave China billions of dollars in lost trade

(Image: Reuters)

On Monday Trump signed a memorandum withdrawing from the Trans-Pacific Partnership, a trade deal negotiated by Obama with the intention of encircling China with a US-led trade bloc around the Pacific rim.

Within hours of his signature the Australian Prime Minister said the US could be simply replaced by China.

Which means that with one stroke of his pen Trump took something which intended to restrict China's economic power, and instead boosted it at the expense of American jobs and business.

4. Trolled the CIA

(Image: Rex)

Imagine Theresa May making a televised speech while stood on the tomb of the Unknown Soldier in Westminster Abbey. Imagine her inviting serving soldiers, and packing the front row with her own fans who whooped, cheered and hollered while she boasted about her magazine covers, spoke about how clever she was and complained about the news.

That's what Trump did when he stood in front of the wall memorialising 117 dead CIA heroes, before a crowd of CIA staff who couldn't be shown on TV, with the front three rows allegedly stuffed with his supporters. His spokesman Sean Spicer claimed they were CIA staff, but as they were happy to be seen on television clapping wildly that seems like one of his 'alternative facts'.

5. Ordered women in other countries not to even hear the word 'abortion'

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Every Republican president since Ronald Reagan has introduced the 'global gag' clause, which means that foreign health charities given US aid money cannot tell their clients about abortion.

That includes when a woman has been told her child has an horrific abnormality, will die in the womb, or is a product of rape or incest.

Those women would either seek an unsafe abortion and perhaps permanently injure or even kill themselves, or that child will be born into a short life of painful misery.

In another country, where Trump isn't even president.

6. Failed on almost all of his 'day one' promises

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He's failed to convene his generals to get a plan on defeating ISIS; he's not deported a single illegal immigrant, or even located any; he's failed to repeal or replace Obamacare, or even find a Congressman who'll introduce such a bill for him.

He's failed to introduced any "extreme vetting" of migrants and failed to find any "unconstitutional executive actions" of Obama which he can cancel.

As a bonus, he's pissed off the Palestinians by threatening, and then backtracking, on plans to move the US embassy to Israel from the capital Tel Aviv to the disputed, multi-faith city of Jerusalem, and seems to have ordered several government employees to stop tweeting.

7. Not lost a single supporter

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Trump had the lowest public approval rating of an incoming president in the modern era - just 45%.

Yet a poll on Tuesday showed it had risen to 57% following some of those meaningless executive orders, his CIA outburst and his failure to get more than two of his Cabinet sworn in.

It seems that Trump's theatrics have so far convinced Americans he's hard at work, even though every photograph of him behind the White House desk shows it devoid of anything resembling a brain-teaser.

So what will he do next?

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Well his history tells us that Trump often talks, makes a quick deal, and then walks off whistling while his customers wonder why they didn't get what they were expecting.

That seems to be what happened with Trump University, it's what seems to have happened with repeated bankruptcies of his companies, and it's what will happen to the USA if he fails to figure out how to do any of the things he promised.

If he can do it, he'll be popular. If he can't - and it's looking very much as if he would rather watch cable news and tweet about it just like other unlikeable irks - his customers will start to get angry.

When they do, he'll tell them it was the UN's fault, the illegals kept hiding, Congress hates him and it's a Chinese conspiracy. That in turn will destroy faith in democracy and national institutions, and I'll bet my bottom dollar someone will suggest letting him rule by executive orders which can't be overturned.

Or, if we're lucky, Congress will figure this all out inside the next six months and impeach him before it all ends horribly.

Fingers crossed, eh?