How was your summer? Quite likely better than President Donald Trump’s cruel, cruel summer.
He spectacularly failed to “repeal and replace” Obamacare as promised. That much-hyped border wall gets no love from Congress (though plenty of taunting and trolling from Mexico’s former president). North Korea keeps lobbing missiles over the heads of American allies and detonating nuclear bombs.
And Trump won’t let us forget his epic Charlottesville meltdown, with his bewildering equivocation about white supremacists and neo-Nazis. CEOs on his various advisory panels ditched him en masse. His approval ratings are at record lows, heading in the general direction of Nixon territory.
Oh, and the special counsel investigating Russia ties seems to be tightening the inquiry into Trump’s private business dealings.
Republicans in the House and Senate have, if not outright abandoned him, certainly put lots of daylight between the White House and the GOP. It has gotten so bad that Trump is now cutting deals with Democrats(!).
The president’s misplaced priorities have put his entire economic agenda at risk. Now it seems that his bad decision-making process is putting his entire presidency in peril.
Summer officially ends Friday at exactly 4:02 p.m, when the autumnal equinox arrives. With it comes a new season for the president to try to accomplish something – anything! – of lasting value.
He has repeatedly shanked multiple opportunities to get the ball in the hole.
The president, who loves golf, should take a “gimme.”
There is no greater gimme in American politics today than the combination of profit repatriation and infrastructure spending. As we have detailed many times before, roads, dams, bridges, tunnels, mass transit, ports and the electrical grid in the U.S. are in conditions ranging from bad to worse. Incidentally, American corporations are sitting on almost $2 trillion in profits overseas. The math on this one is pretty easy.