Why is Trump flailing?

Because
Americans hate his agenda, and its
based on lies.

President Trump. (Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post)

By Greg Sargent April 3 at 9:52 AM

Everyone in Washington is trying to figure out why President

Trumps agenda has stalled on multiple fronts and why his
approval numbers are swirling down the toilet. CNNs Chris
Cillizza suggests Trumps penchant for disruption and chaos
actually works against him. (I agree.) Others point to Trumps
failure to forge relationships on Capitol Hill.
Still others say the problem is congressional Republicans. Trumps
social media director has called for a primary against a House
conservative who opposed Trumps health plan, which may have
violated a law designed to keep government officials from
swaying elections. Some GOP groups are reportedly mulling
ads targeting GOP lawmakers who dont vote with Trump. Thus,
the problem is their disloyalty.

All this has some truth to it. But heres another overarching
reason for Trumps travails: As his campaign promises are getting
translated into concrete policy specifics, Americans are recoiling
from the results. Whats more, this process is unmasking the
disconcerting levels of dishonesty, bad faith, and lack of concern
for detail and procedure that are rotting away at the core of his
agenda and approach to governing, all of which is plainly working
against him.

[What Trump should ask a brutal dictator as he welcomes him to

the White House]
The Post has a remarkable report detailing Trumps increasing
isolation and failure to gain support for his agenda:
The result has been a presidency lacking in significant victories,
beset by major stumbles including the downfall of the
Republicans health-care bill and his travel ban on six Muslim-
majority countries and that is the target of litigation as a result
of executive actions, especially related to the environment.
There are more potential roadblocks ahead. Already,
congressional Republicans have balked at his proposed budget,
and the White Houses insistence on increased spending for the
military and a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border could imperil a
spending bill needed to keep the government running past the
end of April.
The health bill, the travel ban and the border wall are all either
defeated or in deep trouble. As veteran Washington consultant
David Gergen put it, Trump is flailing because he doesnt know
where to find his natural allies.

President Trump on March 30 tweeted that he would fight the

House Freedom Caucus in the 2018 midterm elections after the
group blocked the health-care bill. (Video: Bastien
Inzaurralde/Photo: Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post)

But if this is so, surely it is partly because the policies are so

unpopular. Take health care: Many blame House conservatives for
tanking the GOP bill. But more pragmatic GOP lawmakers also
played a big role. They opposed it in large part because the policy
was so regressive that even they could not abide by it. The plan
would have cut over $800 billion in Medicaid spending which
would have left 14 million fewer on Medicaid, according to the
Congressional Budget Office while delivering an enormous tax
cut for the rich.

[Republicans have made their deal with the devil, and wait for
it!]
A number of moderate House Republicans opposed the plan
precisely becauseit would have taken coverage away from many
of their poorer constituents. Moderates were also alienated in part
because the plan was broadly unpopular: A recent poll found that
only 17 percent of voters backed the plan, and core Trump voter
groups opposed it. The Medicaid cuts were a key reason for that:
74 percent of voters, including 54 percent of Republicans,
opposed its Medicaid cuts revealing broad opposition to its
most prominent mechanism for massively rolling back spending
to cover poor people.

Trump alone is not to blame for this. Trump didnt care about the
details he only wanted a win and thus embraced Paul
Ryans plan. It is Ryanism, which includes repeal-and-replace as
part of the broader goal of shredding the safety net, that helped
create this disaster. Ryan was supposed to craft a policy that
would prove ideologically satisfactory to congressional
Republicans and could also be sold through shrewd rhetorical
subterfuge as a fulfillment of Trumps promise of better health
care for everybody at lower costs. The CBO blew all that up by
unmasking its truly regressive nature and, in the process, the big
policy lie at the core of Trumps repeal-and-replace promise. The
details ended up mattering.

House Freedom Caucus Chair Mark Meadows (R-N.C.) and Rep.

Andy Harris (R-Md.) spoke to reporters about the House GOP
health-care plan, which failed to come to a vote March 23.(The
Washington Post)

Something similar is happening on the travel ban and border wall.

The original travel ban, which was blocked by the courts, was the
result of a laughably slapdash process that could not conceal its
anti-Muslim animus. The new version was also put on hold, in part
because Trump and his advisers themselves revealed that its true
rationale and goals were very similar, thus making it just as
vulnerable to legal challenges, even as its stated rationale has
been undercut by Homeland Securitys own analysts.
(The fact that theres no serious rationale for it may help explain
why its unpopular.) Meanwhile, the wall on the Mexican border
may also stumble over one of Trumps big lies. He claimed Mexico
will pay for it, but now that Congress actually has to do so,
Republicans are privately saying they dont really want to fight for
that spending. The fact that the wall is also very
unpopular probably makes this easier for them.

Trump could still notch victories soon. Neil Gorsuch may be

confirmed to the Supreme Court. Trump may get tax reform of
some kind (including huge tax cuts for the rich). But other aspects
of his agenda are still in doubt. Trump has signed executive orders
rolling back our policies to fight climate change, but doing that
will take years and is very unpopular, perhaps in part because
it wont actually restore coal jobs, as he has promised. Trumps
vow of infrastructure spending could prove popular, but we dont
know whether it will amount to anything more than a tax break
and privatization scheme. Trumps trade bluster is also colliding
with the complexity of policy reality.

Why is Trump tanking? The bottom line is that the ongoing

translation of Trumps agenda into policy specifics is showing that
major elements of it are unpopular, or unworkable because they
are premised on lies, or both.

* SHOWDOWN THIS WEEK ON GORSUCH: CNN reports that

Democrats probably wont supply enough votes for Republicans to
overcome the Democrats filibuster on Neil Gorsuchs nomination
to the Supreme Court, which may trigger GOP elimination of the
filibuster:
With only three Democrats saying they will back the 49-year-old
Coloradan, its increasingly likely Gorsuch cant get the 60 votes
he needs to overcome a Democratic filibuster. Many senators
are worried that the if Republicans weaken the filibuster for
Supreme Court nominees, in the same way Democrats did for all
other presidential appointments in 2013, the chamber would be
on a slippery slope and the filibuster for legislation could someday
be diminished too.
On Fox News Sunday, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell
(R-Ky.) said that this week will end with confirmation of Gorsuch,
one way or the other, which sounds like a threat to go nuclear.

* THE WHIP COUNT ON GORSUCH SO FAR: Politico tallies it

up: All 52 Republican senators are set to support Gorsuch. Only
three Democrats thus far will break with the Democrats filibuster;
and 37 are supporting the filibuster. Eight are undecided:
Michael Bennet (Colo.)
Ben Cardin (Md.)
Chris Coons (Del.)
Dianne Feinstein (Calif.)
Angus King (Maine)
Patrick Leahy (Vt.)
Robert Menendez (N.J.)
Mark Warner (Va.)
Republicans need to get five of those to break the filibuster;
Democrats need to get four of them to sustain it.

* TRUMP COUNTY IS UPSET AT HIS BUDGET CUTS: The New

York Times reports on people in a poor Ohio county that went for
Trump who are now upset that his budget cuts will eliminate a
housing program that many relied on. As one local official says:
Our county voted for President Trump, so Im not sure they quite
understand what is going to happen. I dont think people realize
how much we rely on these services. I dont think people are
making the connection between cutting the HUD funds and
paving our streets or building new affordable housing.
But as one local who relied on the program tells the Times, Trump
will protect them from people who are coming into this country
who are trying to hurt us, which is more important.

* TRUMP VOTERS WOULD GET HURT BY TRUMPS

BUDGET: The Post, meanwhile, talks to rural voters in Oklahoma
who backed Trump and finds worry that his budget cuts would
decimate multiple programs they depend on:
The presidents proposed budget would disproportionately harm
the rural areas and small towns that were key to his unexpected
win. Many red states like Oklahoma where every single county
went for Trump are more reliant on the federal funds that
Trump wants to cut than states that voted for Democratic
nominee Hillary Clinton.
No one could possibly have predicted this outcome.

* WHY TRUMPS TRADE AGENDA TOTALLY FIZZLED: Paul

Krugman runs through the reasons Trumps blustery promises on
trade are proving a bust, including the fact that trade is deeply
interwoven into the economy and cant be easily unwound by
tariffs:
Reversing globalization now would produce [a] painful Trump
shock, disrupting jobs and communities all over again at a
deep level Trumptrade is running into the same wall that caused
Trumpcare to crash and burn. Mr. Trump came into office talking
big, sure that his predecessors had messed everything up and he
he alone could do far better. And millions of voters believed
him.
Its worth adding that if Trump does end up renegotiating our
trade deals, its still possible he will do so in ways that favor
corporations, not workers. That would shock you, wouldnt it?

* EVERYONE SHOULD WANT THE TRUTH ABOUT RUSSIAN

MEDDLING: E.J. Dionne argues that all of us should want to get
to the bottom of what Russia did to interfere in our election, which
is sometimes derided these days as McCarthyite:
Shouldnt everyone, left, right and center, be furious over Russias
efforts to inject calumny and falsehood into the American political
bloodstream? It is not McCarthyite to ask why Trump
has spoken with such warmth about a Russian autocrat or taken
so many positions (on NATO and the European Union, for
example) that can be fairly seen as more in line with Russias
interests than our own.
Lets not lose sight of the big picture: Trump and many
congressional Republicans are frustrating efforts to obtain a full
accounting into everything Russia did to undermine our
democracy.

* AND JARED/IVANKA MUST RECUSE THEMSELVES: Jared

Kushner and Ivanka Trump have released disclosure reports
showing they still are profiting from extensive holdings. A trio of
ethics experts has a good piece in USA Today explaining why they
must recuse themselves from policy debates that could create
conflicts of interest:
Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump have so many potential conflicts
of interest that if they abide by ethics laws and past White House
practices, they wont be able to advise the president on three of
his top priorities: Trade, tax reform and Wall Street deregulation
Jared will need to recuse from many matters involving the
financial services industry, including any steps to repeal the
2010 Dodd-Frank Act. They both will also have to recuse from
any decisions about tax benefits for the real estate industry, and
because the tax code is chock full of them, this will probably
mean recusal from the entirety of tax reform.
Itll be interesting to see if any congressional Republicans raise a
peep about this.
Posted by Thavam