For Donald Trump, the noose is tightening
The failure to repeal Obamacare and imposing sanctions on Russia are major setbacks for the US president
Even with a new minder trying to bring some order to the White House, United States President Donald Trump remains in a heap of trouble. The recent installation of retired general John Kelly, formerly Trump’s secretary for homeland security, as chief of staff, replacing the hapless Reince Priebus, has reduced some of the internal chaos and induced a bit more discipline in Trump’s behaviour. But all this could change any day.
Kelly has put a stop to aides sauntering into the Oval Office whenever they felt like it and has demanded that papers and memos for the president be submitted to him first. Keen Trump observers expect that he’ll soon begin to chafe under the discipline Kelly has encouraged. The recent failure of the Republican-dominated Congress to repeal Barack Obama’s signature achievement, the Affordable Care Act was a humiliating defeat for Trump.
At the end of six months in office, Trump doesn’t have a single legislative achievement to crow about.
While the healthcare bill was commanding most of the attention on Capitol Hill, another piece of legislation was moving along in the Congress, representing another setback for Trump. Troubled by the president’s apparent soft spot for Vladimir Putin, overwhelming bipartisan majorities in both chambers passed a bill to impose more sanctions on Russia and to prevent the president from lifting any such penalties.
Meanwhile, the investigation into Trump and his campaign’s relations with Russia in connection with its meddling in Trump’s favour in the 2016 election has continued out of the public’s sight. That investigation has broadened to include Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner and his son Donald Jr.
This spring, Trump let it be known that he wanted the special counsel running that investigation, Robert Mueller, a former FBI director who is highly respected by both parties, to be fired. By law he couldn’t fire Mueller himself, so he tried to bully Attorney General Jeff Sessions into resigning.
But Sessions refused to resign. Republican senators, concerned that Trump might remove him during the August recess, established a procedure that would prevent Trump from appointing an interim attorneygeneral to fire Mueller.
Then, as Congress prepared to leave for the August recess, it was learned that Mueller – who hired highly regarded prosecutors specialising in international financial transactions, despite Trump’s warnings not to investigate his finances – impaneled a grand jury in Washington. The noose tightens.