Trump now must manage crises at home, abroad
2 major issues arise as president faces series of challenges
WASHINGTON — As a candidate, Donald Trump boasted of his lack of government experience and argued his business background qualified him to handle a president’s most august responsibility — handling the nuclear arsenal.
On Sunday, hours after North Korea claimed it had tested its first hydrogen bomb, far more powerful than its previous nuclear tests, Defense Secretary Jim Mattis emerged from a meeting that Trump just had with his top national security advisers, and raised the specter of nuclear war.
Standing in the White House driveway with Gen. Joseph Dunford, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Mattis warned Pyongyang that aggression against the United States or its allies would trigger a unified world response and what he termed the “total annihilation of a country, namely North Korea.”
“Any threat to the United States or its territory, including Guam, or our allies, will be met with a massive military response, a response both effective and overwhelming,” Mattis said.
The warning was all the more severe because it came from Mattis, a retired Marine Corps general who had sought to tamp down so many of Trump’s bellicose comments and tweets in recent weeks that he was forced to deny a split with the president.
Sunday’s drama represented a new reality for Trump. His presidency has been defined largely by political crises of his own making, from his decision to fire FBI Director James Comey to his comments after the violence in Charlottesville, Va. It was inevitable that circumstances outside his reach would complicate his tenure.
And now they have, raising the question of how he will handle a pair of major crises — the growing threat from North Korea and the recovery and relief efforts for hundreds of thousands of Americans caught in epic floods in Texas and Louisiana. To add to his challenges, the White House has said Trump will disclose Tuesday whether he will authorize deportation of 800,000 so-called dreamers, immigrants brought here illegally as children — a decision that will be political combustible no matter what he decides.
Off in the wings are high-stakes battles that will begin Tuesday on Capitol Hill, including funding the government to avoid a shutdown by Sept. 30, raising the federal debt ceiling and approving billions in aid for the victims of Harvey’s devastation.
Undergirding all these is special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation of whether Trump’s aides cooperated with Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential election. That probe has steadily gathered steam, even if pushed out of view in recent weeks.
The combination would tax any president, but particularly Trump, who has proven to be a tempestuous and unpredictable chief executive. And Sunday’s events showed again his difficulty in gaining traction for his presidency.
Early this year, Trump’s well-received address to Congress was buried within a day by negative developments in the Russian investigation. On Sunday, when he might have been basking in praise from Harvey victims he visited Saturday in Texas and Louisiana, he was instead overtaken by actions half a world away.
The abrupt change of focus from domestic recovery to international fear over North Korean leader Kim Jong Un’s growing military might was clear Sunday morning in raw juxtaposition.
Trump and his wife, Melania, attended services in St. John’s Church, across from the White House, to underscore his call for a day of prayer for the benefit of Harvey victims.
As he left, reporters shouted a question: Did he plan to attack North Korea?
“We’ll see,” he said, and returned to the White House to meet with his top national security advisers.
The confluence of crises hit Washington at the opening of a month already overwhelmed with challenges.
After Congress returns from recess on Tuesday, lawmakers and the White House face a series of mustdo items that have proven volatile and divisive in the past.
As September dawned, relations between the Republican-led White House and Congress remained raw from fallout of the failed effort to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act, known as Obamacare, which Trump still would like to add to the fall agenda.
The multiple crises hit Trump as he languishes at the low end of polling for most presidents, a fact that limits both his opportunities for persuasion and his ability to threaten.
In a recent Fox News poll, 41 percent of Americans approved of the way he was conducting his presidency; about the same number, 43 percent, backed how he had handled the North Korea threat.
The North Korea crisis calls for nuance and deliberateness. The Harvey recovery effort will be measured in years, requiring a willingness to dig in for the long haul. Trump’s Tuesday announcement on the fate of children brought to this country without proper papers will require top-notch political instincts.
The host of issues looming on Capitol Hill will require mutual respect and policy acumen and a deft hand at managing competing power groups.
So far, Trump largely has favored displays of strength and reveled in unilateral decision-making. The attributes he will now need remain sheathed, if they exist at all.