In his defense, President Trump campaigned on a pledge to make American great again; he never promised anything about protecting your privacy. It’s hard to understand, however, why the leaders of a great country would sell out its citizens.

Yet that’s what just happened. Republicans in Congress last week voted by a narrow margin to repeal regulations adopted in October by the Federal Communications Commission that would have required internet service providers to respect the privacy of their customers. Trump signed the repeal.

Democratic lawmakers were united in opposition.

The new rules would have required internet providers to obtain consumer consent before using geolocation, web browsing history, health information, child-related online activity, financial and other information for advertising and marketing.

Republicans and the Trump administration argued that such protections would be bad for business. FCC Chairman Ajit Pai criticized the Obama-era rules as “a plan for regulating the internet.” If regulating means providing sensible privacy protections, that is true.

This fits a pattern. In one of his first acts, the president halted the implementation of a rule that would have required financial advisers to act in the best interests of their clients. The intent was to make sure a client seeking help in retirement planning, for instance, was not instead sold unnecessary and high-fee investment products.

The financial industry pushed hard to block application of the rule set to begin this month. So consumers beware. Don’t look to Washington for protection.

Trump has also made clear his intent to gut the Dodd-Frank Act, passed into law in the wake of the abuses that led to the housing and market collapse, and subsequent Great Recession, in the last year of President George W. Bush’s administration.

“Dodd-Frank is a disaster. We’re going to be doing a number on Dodd-Frank,” Trump said in January.

The administration's plans to undo its consumer protection rules; its provisions requiring financial institutions to have adequate capitalization; and its mandates for unwinding a large bank that gets into fiscal trouble — have only been blocked by the administration's incompetence.

As Bloomberg recently reported, because the Trump White House has been so slow in filling positions, only two seats each are filled on the five-member U.S. Securities and Exchange and Futures Trading commissions, in each case with one Democrat and one Republican. With nothing being done, nothing changes.

The respite is temporary. Eventually, the Trump administration will fill seats and get on with its shilling for Wall Street.