The inbetweener
In the latest Trumpian twist, the President has begun cosying up to the Democrats. Is this the start
EARLY on Sunday morning, Donald Trump re-tweeted a spliced-together video of him hitting a golf ball which appears to strike Hillary Clinton on the back of her head as she is boarding a plane, causing her to fall over. Disgusting, said his opponents. Get a sense of humour, said his supporters. And so began another bizarre week of his most bizarre Presidency.
On Tuesday he stood before the United Nations General Assembly and an audience braced for some of the usual Trumpy taboo-busting. He didn’t disappoint, gamely speaking up for nations pursuing their own self-interest and lashing into Iran and the “depraved regime” of North Korea. “No nation on Earth has an interest in seeing this band of criminals arm itself with nuclear weapons and missiles,” he said. “The United States has great strength and patience, but if it is forced to defend itself or its allies we will have no choice but to totally destroy North Korea. Rocket Man is on a suicide mission for himself and for his regime.”
By Wednesday he was back to Washington and the mud-wrestle of trying to dismantle President Obama’s healthcare reforms. Here, he has both Democrats and Republicans off-balance, scrambling to understand his motives.
For most of the summer he taunted the Republican leaders in Congress for failing to repeal Obamacare. Then, last week, he humiliated them by inviting the two most senior Democrats in Congress, Senator Chuck Schumer and Congresswoman Nancy Pelosi, for Chinese food at the White House. There, they hashed out a deal to protect the “dre amers” — the young illegal immigrants brought to the US by their parents.
Trump recently ended President Obama’s five-year-old executive order protecting these young immigrants, and put them under threat of deportation. He hoped that by reversing course and allowing them to stay, he might win Democratic support for his long-coveted wall along the Mexican border.
Pelosi and Schumer said Trump had agreed to let the “dreamers” stay, no walls attached. But the next day, Trump’s
Trump doesn’t want to be boxed in: ‘You’re better off if you can step to the right and sometimes to the left’
contradictory and obscure tweets left Washington confused about what had been agreed. It is still unclear.
Republicans who hoped Trump would be tough on immigrants were furious that he was colluding with Democrats. And Democrats were livid with their leaders for consorting with their political Anti-Christ.
Schumer was overheard on the Senate floor saying he persuaded Trump by telling him that the way to avoid being boxed in by his own party was to work with the opposition: “You’re much better off if you can sometimes step right and sometimes step left.”
It was a crafty pitch to Trump’s vanity, his pride in his skill as a negotiator. It is the subject of his most famous book, The Art of the Deal.
If you believe Trump is indeed a supreme negotiator, then all of these fakes and shimmies are mere prelude, the disorienting warm-up to getting what he wants. If not, then you might easily think him politically demented.
The conservative Wall Street Journal wrote following the the deal/no-deal on immigrants: “Did this mark the arrival of a new, compassionate, capable Donald Trump? Sadly, probably not. Mr Trump’s actions are rarely underpinned by principles, or a vision of who we are as a nation. Even on matters of near-perfect moral clarity, he is often transactional and capricious. If he does the right thing, there must be an angle.”
The conservative writer and ardent Never-Trumper William Kristol issued a similar warning: “To liberals, centrists and conservatives, work for good policies during Trump’s presidency — never lose sight of his unfitness to be President.”
This week Trump and the Democrats were at it again, as momentum built for yet another Republican effort to reverse Obamacare. This time the Republicans are trying to jam through a piece of quickie legislation before the end of September. Their law would gut many of Obama’s reforms and push responsibility for managing healthcare away from Washington back to the states, which have wildly differing views on how to fund it.
Due to an arcane Congressional rule, they can pass it in the Senate with a simple 51- vote majority before the end of the month but will have to get 60 votes after October 1. The 60-vote bar