Donald Trump is now referring to himself in his copious Twitter messages as ‘T’. Unlike the real Mr. T, who starred in the popular 1980s American television series The A-Team, however, President Trump is unable to muscle his way to victory. Quite the contrary. Thanks to majority leader Mitch McConnell’s sudden decision yesterday to abandon a vote on the Republican health care bill that would strip some 22 million Americans of coverage, Trump is maintaining a perfect batting average of zero on passing any major legislation. After seven years of huffing and puffing about the perfidies of ObamaCare and of promising to repeal Obama’s signature initiative immediately, it’s starting to look like Groundhog Day for the Republican party. The only thing that the bill seemed to unify was Republican and Democratic Governors in denouncing it.
The danger for the GOP is that in pushing the vote past July 4th, America’s celebration of independence from George III, a true revolt may once more emerge among voters against the prospect of losing social benefits, further cowing Republican senators from supporting a repudiation of ObamaCare. How long Trump will focus on healthcare, however, is an open question. It is clearly Russia that is on his mind.
Even as his son-in-law Jared Kushner adds prominent lawyers to his legal defense team, Trump continues to careen about, maintaining one week that the allegations of Russian interference are ‘FAKE NEWS’, to saying that President Obama is at fault for not stymieing Moscow in the summer of 2016. Trump’s latest missive is the contention that ‘The real story is that President Obama did NOTHING after being informed in August about Russian meddling. With 4 months looking at Russia … under a magnifying glass, they have zero ‘tapes’ of T people colluding. There is no collusion & no obstruction. I should be given apology!’ Whether or not ‘T people’ were colluding with Moscow’s minions remains an open question as does the question of who is supposed to apologise to him, but the Washington Post—another outlet that Trump has deemed a purveyor of fake news and a failing institution—reported today that former Trump campaign adviser Carter Page has extensively talked with FBI investigators.
Meanwhile, Trump seized upon the news that CNN has retracted a story about Russia and Trump and accepted the resignations of three staffers associated with the piece as prima facie evidence of the widespread corruption of the media. ‘Ratings Way Down!’, he announced on Twitter. Actually, they aren’t. CNN had double-digit growth in its last quarter. But, hey, who expects accuracy from a president who, as was reported today by the indefatigable David A. Fahrenthold, has phoney Time magazine covers of himself dated March 1, 2009 ostentatiously displayed in several of his golf clubs? Tsk, tsk, T.
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