South Florida Sun-Sentinel (Sunday)
Why no one trusts Trump anymore
Deal-maker? Lost credibility marks the midway point of his presidency
WASHINGTON — Sen. Mitch McConnell was jolted with a fresh reminder of President Donald Trump’s capriciousness last month: The majority leader persuaded Republican colleagues to take a politically difficult vote to temporarily fund the government, but not a border wall, only to see Trump withdraw support — initiating the longest shutdown in history.
House Republicans learned the same lesson early in Trump’s presidency when he rallied them to repeal Obamacare, then described their effort as “mean.”
As Trump reaches the halfway mark of his presidency Sunday, he has left a trail of negotiating partners from both chambers of Congress, both political parties and countries around the world feeling double-crossed and even lied to.
The result is that the president who campaigned as the world’s best deal-maker, vowing that he alone could fix Washington’s dysfunction, has been stymied as he looks for achievements before facing the voters again. Two years in, the man who built a political reputation as a guy who tells it like it is has lost the essential ingredients to closing deals: credibility and trust.
“He just undermined the trust and confidence that some Republican members did want to have in him,” said Carlos Curbelo, a Florida Republican who lost his House seat in November, in part because of Trump’s unpopularity.
Trump’s squandered credibility, overlaid with nonstop investigations, is likely to imperil a second-half agenda that includes basic responsibilities — raising the nation’s borrowing limit, most essentially — as well as more ambitious goals. Among those are measures to rebuild the nation’s infrastructure, win congressional approval of a revised trade deal with Mexico and Canada, overhaul immigration laws and lower the costs of prescription drugs.
McConnell, having been burned, has largely left the shutdown fight to Trump. House
Republicans, having lost their majority in large part because of voters’ own dismay with Trump, are now on the sidelines as he must battle House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. And Democrats, following her lead, are emboldened given their experience with the president’s unreliability as a negotiating partner.
On Saturday, Trump unveiled a shutdown proposal in a televised speech from the White House.
Republican lawmakers’ criticism is muted, however, because even as Trump has ranked among the least popular presidents in modern history, he has consistently commanded overwhelming support from GOP voters, according to polls.
Still, the mistrust from nearly every quarter of Congress has grown each time he has broken his word, complicating efforts to pass his initiatives, according to former lawmakers, aides and close observers.
“Even things that should on paper be easy, there just always seems to be a way for him to step on his own foot,” said a former aide who requested anonymity. “Sometimes, this is unintentional — he just says stuff.”
Lawmakers have been dealing with Trump’s shifts from his start, and at the White House he leaves the impression with each adviser who talks with him that he shares their point of view, until he doesn’t.
“Sonny Perdue’s right on that. Oh, no — Mick Mulvaney’s right on that,” one former official said, imitating Trump talking about the secretary of agriculture and the White House chief of staff. The official added, “You sort of feel like you’re a little bit of a pinball.”
After Trump seems to have made a decision, he remains “flexible,” as another former aide put it, making it nearly impossible for his staff to craft a strategy to
rally Congress or the public. Often, he will hear from far-right lawmakers in the House Freedom Caucus, or from like-minded commentators, including Ann Coulter, Laura Ingraham or Sean Hannity.
That tendency first became clear in 2017 when Trump initially celebrated, and then denigrated, House Republicans’ vote to repeal the Affordable Care Act.
“The ‘mean’ comment and some other things really pulled the rug out from under” House Republicans, said Matt Gorman, a former communications adviser to them.
That sentiment was cemented in March last year, as Congress debated another spending bill. Then, too, immigration was the issue that set Trump off.
For weeks, his administration supported the $1.3 trillion spending bill, saying it wasn’t perfect but would bolster the military, enhance immigration enforcement
and keep the government open. Officials had a plan to sell it to the public, enlisting the defense secretary at the time, Jim Mattis, to highlight pay raises for soldiers and money for new equipment.
But as a bill-signing ceremony approached, Trump “just got madder and madder” — riled by hard-right lawmakers and conservative media figures who complained that the legislation didn’t fund a border wall, a former official recounted. Trump tweeted angrily, threatening a veto.
Ultimately, Trump signed the bill, but only after calling the measure “ridiculous” and insisting, “I will never sign another bill like this again.” Even those who had given Trump a pass on earlier betrayals walked away angry.
“What kind of credibility do you have when the president says he supports a bill and then says he doesn’t like it anymore?” one of the former officials asked.