White House credibility at risk due to Trump’s whims
WASHINGTON: What’s the White House’s word worth?
Days of conflicting and misleading statements from President Donald Trump and his top aides have fuelled new questions about the White House’s credibility, sowing mistrust and instability within the West Wing and leaving some congressional Republicans wondering if they have a good faith negotiating partner in the president.
One former congressional GOP leadership aide said it was becoming impossible for Republicans to negotiate anything with White House officials, given the president’s willingness to undermine his own team’s public and private assurances.
In turn, White House officials have found themselves in the bizarre position of urging lawmakers to ignore some of the president’s own statements.
That was the case on Friday, when Trump blasted out a morning tweet threatening to veto a massive government spending Bill that the White House had guaranteed lawmakers and the public that he would sign.
White House officials privately insisted the president was simply venting after watching news cover age that cast the deal as a defeat for several of his priorities.
After hours of uncertainty, Trump’s veto threat crumbled, and he ultimately signed the legislation.
Still, it left some Republicans rattled.
“The spontaneity and lack of impulse control are areas of concern for lots of members on both sides of the aisle,” said Rep Charlie Dent, a Pennsylvania Republican who has been critical of the president.
“Disorder, chaos, instability, uncertainty, intemperate statements are not conservative virtues in my opinion.”
Trent Lott, the former Republican Senate majority leader from Mississippi, said GOP lawmakers “feel a good deal of consternation” about the White Houseinduced whiplash. But he added: “I assume there was method in what the president did.”
Members of both parties said they were troubled that Trump seems oblivious to how he has undermined his own clout and agenda by staking out positions and then brazenly abandoning them.
Where legislators once might have attributed such missteps to the president’s newness to Washington and its ways, not anymore.
Trump’s vacillating on the spending Bill was just one in a series of recent instances that put the credibility of the White House’s words under a microscope.