Trump gets terrible political news ahead of anniversary

Donald Trump has been trying to celebrate his oneyear anniversary as president, and all he gets is terrible political news. His party got skunked in Tuesday’s elections, his associates keep getting tied to the Russians and the Republicans in Congress are flailing around like a bunch of panicked gerbils.

In the latest episode of Cabinet Members off the Rails: the sorrows of Wilbur Ross Jr.

A new investigative report detailed connections between Ross and a shipping group linked to Vladimir Putin’s son-in-law. Even worse, Forbes announced it was taking Ross off its list of richest Americans, concluding that most of the $3.7 billion Ross told the magazine he owned was fictional.

The Trump campaign adviser Carter Page made quite a splash with his rambling, six-hour-plus testimony before a congressional committee that demonstrated not only that he had been in contact with Russians during the campaign, but also that the man Trump picked to be one of his top coaches on foreign policy issues is ... sort of nuts.

“I am not a smooth Russian speaker. Maybe you could say that about my English as well,” explained the former college lecturer with a doctorate from the University of London. One committee member described the whole performance as “really eccentric behavior.”

And then came the elections! The biggest race was for governor of Virginia, where Trump had done robocalls and tweeted for the Republican, Ed Gillespie. When his candidate got trounced, Trump quickly and supportively announced that it was Gillespie’s own fault for having failed to “embrace me or what I stand for.”

The president did not mention the results in New Jersey, where voters rose up in revulsion to Chris Christie and elected a Democrat as his successor. You cannot entirely blame Trump for Christie’s unpopularity, but the governor’s nose-dive really did accelerate when the two of them started hanging out together.

While a campaign observer might have imagined the nation was obsessed with immigrants and Confederate statues this season, it turned out the actual voters were way more concerned about health care. It was the thing Virginians brought up most often to election pollsters. In Maine, referendum voters demanded Obamacare expansion.

And this month Obamacare enrollment season opened with a big surge of sign-ups despite the president’s attempt to keep the enrollment opportunities more secret than his tax returns.

Trump, however, is trying to attach an Obamacare repeal onto the Republican tax bill. It was only one of his helpful efforts to assist his party members in Congress. This week he also had a phone call with moderate Democrats, trying to promote the GOP plan.

The president was abroad on Election Day, visiting South Korea and making preparations for a dramatic secret visit to the Demilitarized Zone. Which had to be canceled because it was raining.

Really.

In another oratorical high point, the president managed, in a speech about the evils of North Korea, to work in a plug for one of his properties. (“The Women’s U.S. Open was held this year at Trump National Golf Club in Bedminster, New Jersey, and it just happened to be won by a great Korean golfer . ... ”)

Meanwhile, back home, Republicans in Congress are announcing their retirement plans in droves.

Nothing personal.