Trump enters the White House facing a myriad of crises
Republican governors are baulking at plans to repeal Obamacare even as the election win still sits uneasy
Donald Trump enters the White House embroiled in scandal, in a pitched battle with the intelligence services and news media, and facing a world on fire.
Among the many challenges the President-elect will face, the most urgent may be to steady the ship.
Even before being sworn in, he is facing a Congressional investigation into possible collusion between Russia and his election campaign.
Fearing an asterisk is being painted next to his historic victory over Hillary Clinton, Trump has gone on the offensive.
The incoming Republican leader has lashed out at “sleazebag political operatives,” the intelligence services — whom he compared to Nazis — and the media, reprising campaign tactics that played well with his base.
But add to that serious allegations of nepotism, legal problems over his business interests, the ill-preparedness of some of his cabinet nominees and a fracas over health care reform that has left Republicans in disarray, and the picture gets even bleaker.
The image of ‘Teflon Don’ — who as a candidate rode out scandal like no one else in modern political history — is taking on water.
Quite aside from the cost in time and energy of fighting on multiple fronts, the crises appear to be eroding his credibility, the base currency of any presidency.
His approval rating stands at 44 per cent, according to a Gallup poll — the lowest level of support for any incoming president since the organisation began doing the surveys in the Clinton era.
In the corresponding period before his presidency, Barack Obama enjoyed an 83 per cent rating.
That unpopularity will make it much easier for allies to bolt. Republican lawmakers up for re-election or in moderate states and districts are unlikely to go to bat for a deeply unpopular president.
Senator Marco Rubio — a former Trump rival for the Republican presidential nomination — is already openly raising the prospect he could oppose Trump’s pick for secretary of state, oil executive Rex Tillerson.
Republican governors are also baulking at plans to repeal Obamacare, and all the time Trump’s victory is being called into question.
A massive ‘Women’s March on Washington’ is planned for today, the day after his inauguration.
Disparate group
With this kind of sentiment swirling, Trump may be the first president to enter the White House with a bunker mentality.
To help him run the country, Trump has turned to a disparate group of family members, generals, billionaires and establishment Republicans — few of whom have any White House experience.
In Russia, Vladimir Putin may be the strongest leader since Leonid Brezhnev, as he aggressively tries to renegotiate the terms of the end of the Cold War.
Putin’s effort to re-establish Moscow’s influence in Syria already hobbled the Obama administration. A similar Russian drive in Afghanistan, Libya or eastern Europe could pose serious problems for Trump’s bid to smooth relations.
Meanwhile, the President-elect has taken a more bellicose stance toward China, at just the time Beijing is feeling more assertive.
Trump and Xi Jinping’s rival ambitions dramatically raise the possibility that various disputes — from Taiwan to currency rates to freedom of navigation in the South China Sea — could become flashpoints.