Of a beautiful relationship, asks
would require Democratic support, which will never happen.
The online news site, Vox, called various Republican Senators to explain why they needed to replace Obamacare in such a hurry. The best Senator Pat Roberts of Kansas could come up with was this: “Look, we’re in the back seat of a convertible being driven by Thelma and Louise, and we’re headed toward the canyon. So we have to get out of the car, and you have to have a car to get into, and this is the only car there is.”
This is not a view shared by the millions of Americans who have health insurance courtesy of Obamacare.
It is hard to think that Trump has only been in office for nine months. So much has changed. The pressure of the investigation into alleged collusion between the Russian government and Trump’s campaign has everyone in the White House lawyered up and on edge. The walking dead of his administration
IVANKA Trump has recorded an interview with Dr Oz, a daytime TV doctor, in which she is said to describe her role as to “inform, advise and then ultimately execute” her father’s ideas but not to “moderate” him. Daytime TV is hardly the big platform originally envisaged for her.
But she is doing better than her husband, Jared Kushner, who has vanished from view since the arrival of the former Marine general John Kelly as Trump’s chief of staff. Kelly is rumoured to have a low opinion of Kushner’s lack of experience and his incessant leaking to the press.
Rex Tillerson, Trump’s Secretary of State, left his imperial position as chief exe c u t ive o f Ex xo n to join the administration but he now cuts an emasculated figure, scuttling along the fringes of this week’s UN meetings.
Doing a little better is Trump’s former chief strategist, Steve Bannon. He is back running his conservative media empire, Breitbart News, and scheming with the hedge fund billionaire and Trump backer Robert Mercer to support aggressively Trumpy candidates against mainstream Republicans in state and national elections. They want to make the Republican Party Trump’s own.
There are many around Trump who believe all the nonsense of the past few months will be forgotten and forgiven if he can do one thing: dramatically cut taxes.
The original plan was to fund these tax cuts by repealing Obamacare. But unless that happens this month, he is going to have to get creative. That task will fall to his Treasury Secretary, Steve Mnuchin, a former Goldman Sachs banker and film producer who up to now has lurked in Washington’s shadows. But his time in the spotlight, and the President’s next Twitter target if he fails, is coming.
@delvesbroughton