Enough Already

It’s almost the end of August, seven months after the inauguration and nearly 10 since Election Day, and President Trump is still holding campaign-style rallies devoted largely to media-bashing. If this is the “winning” America was supposed to get “tired of,” that’s one Mission Accomplished.

Not so, any major mission that involves Congress. ObamaCare remains the law of the land. The military’s not getting remotely the money it needs to make up for Obamaera cuts. And serious tax reform is starting to look like a pipe dream.

Merely passing bills to hike the debt limit and to fund the government for another year is likely to consume the House and Senate when they reconvene.

Yet there’s Trump, spending more than an hour slamming the press — which does nothing to change anyone’s mind, let alone build support for actually getting anything

A good chunk of Trump’s base will cheer any media-bashing, and it no doubt makes the president feel good. But after the tenth or the hundredth go-round, it starts to ring hollow even to people who generally agree.

Yes, most of the media despise Trump, and will eagerly cherry-pick quotes. But that’s a reason to choose your words carefully in the first place — or, when you’ve belatedly clarified with some prepared remarks, to not follow up with yet more confusing off-the-cuff comments the next day.

Worse, by spending so much time Tuesday complaining about the Fourth Estate, Trump obscured the message of unity he pushed so hard in his Monday night speech on Afghanistan and his Wednesday remarks to the American Legion.

Above all else, Trump voters (and, heck, most Clinton voters) are looking for those “jobs, jobs, jobs.” To deliver on that promise, the president needs to bear down and focus on getting his economic program passed into law.