Trump can’t help himself

MORE CONTROVERSY: STIRS UP FIVE NEW CONFRONTATIONS IN JUST EIGHT DAYS

Requests from mayor in Puerto Rico met with venom by US president.

Branchburg

It was meant to be a rebound of sorts after his summer slide in polls, but the past week has proved another series of stumbles for Donald Trump, beset by his own propensity to stir controversy.

The US president’s approval rating had ticked up slightly in recent weeks after bottoming out following his contentious reaction to violence in Charlottesville, Virginia in August.

And he was all in as his Republican Party unveiled its plan to reform the tax system, a move he hopes will lead to his first major legislative accomplishment of his term.

But the positivity evaporated in a series of bruising confrontations and defeats.

Trump has courted controversy and faced numerous crises during his turbulent eight-month presidency.

But he has endured and caused both over the past week, in extraordinary measure.

In the past eight days, Trump has: waged war against American football players who kneel in protest during the national anthem; saw his party’s latest Obamacare repeal plan defeated; accepted a Cabinet member’s resignation for using expensive charter planes for government travel; and faced a mounting crisis in hurricane-ravaged Puerto Rico.

He also made what appeared to be a major political miscalculation in a Republican Senate primary race, backing the incumbent who wound up losing definitively to a firebrand conservative in the Tuesday run-off.

On Saturday, as he hunkered down in his golf club in leafy central New Jersey for a second straight weekend, he unloaded on San Juan Mayor Carmen Yulin Cruz, who had spent days pleading for more and quicker aid to help her shattered US island territory.

Her forceful requests were met by venom by a president angry about her criticism of the response.

“Such poor leadership ability by the Mayor of San Juan, and others in Puerto Rico, who are not able to get their workers to help,” Trump fumed on Twitter on Saturday.

“They want everything to be done for them when it should be a community effort.”

Trump claimed there were 10 000 federal workers on the island “doing a fantastic job”. –