I love it.
So on Sunday, Donald Trump had two items on his agenda:
- send Mike Pence to football game and force him to make a spectacle of himself at tax payers’ expense
- start a Twitter war with Bob Corker
Both of those efforts failed spectacularly.
The Pence PR stunt was so absurdly transparent that even the conservative media seemed to see through it and Pence didn’t help matters by trying to pass off a three-year-old tweet for a brand new picture of him and “mother” cheering on the Colts.
As to the Corker feud, well, that quickly turned into a disaster “the likes of which the world has never seen” (to use a Trump-ism).
For one thing, Corker immediately fired back calling the White House an “adult care center.” And then, for good measure, he gave an interview to the NY Times in which the Tennessee Senator said, among other things, that Trump might well “start World War III” before implicitly asking Americans to stop pretending like you don’t know that Trump is out of his mind.
Ok, so here’s what we said about all of that in terms of what it portends for Trump’s agenda:
In addition to reinforcing a popular meme about John Kelly being a babysitter for Donald Trump, this just further underscores the notion that Trump is tearing apart the GOP. This is emblematic of why he can’t get anything done on the legislative front. Who in their right mind would want to ally themselves with this President?
As it turns out, Cowen agrees.
“Tax euphoria may break this week, with the Senate budget back to zero-margin on vote as President Trump, Sen. Bob Corker feud,” Cowen’s Chris Krueger writes, in a new note, adding that “without a budget, tax is dead. Full stop.”
“Passing FY 2018 Senate budget has some eerie parallels to health care, as no Democrats will vote for the budget [while] Sen. Rand Paul is expected to vote no because it doesn’t cut spending fast enough [and] Sen. John McCain also sounds like a no as it doesn’t repeal sequester, which disproportionately hits the Pentagon,” Krueger continues.
And then it gets really funny. “That means GOP can only afford one more defection, with Corker, a deficit hawk, engaging in one of the more surreal public correspondence exchanges in recent memory days after saying Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, Defense Secretary Jim Mattis and White House Chief of Staff John Kelly help keep U.S. from chaos,” Chris muses, recounting the tragicomedy that’s unfolded before our very eyes over the past several days.
Bottom line:
Either Trump realizes that Corker can sink the remainder of the Trump/GOP legislative effort and is upset by that reality, or he didn’t/doesn’t know and just made it a reality. Either way, we see ZERO upside for the budget process/tax reform in this Twitter tantrum with the policy downside limit-down.
So yeah. Everything we said on Sunday. And see this is a “here we go again” moment. Trump keeps doing this. Does anyone want to go out on a limb and suggest that John McCain’s recalcitrance has nothing to do with then-candidate Trump saying he wasn’t a war hero because he was captured? Similarly, do you think it helps when Trump lambasts Mitch McConnell on Twitter?
This is hopeless. And it underscores the reality facing folks like Gary Cohn: it is impossible to implement this agenda because Trump can and will tank the entire thing on Twitter at the drop of a hat.
Oh, and getting back to the above-mentioned Chris Krueger, remember what he said last month when the tax “plan” was first released:
No revenue number makes the rest almost an academic exercise. [I still] believe nothing will pass on taxes this year or next.
There never was going to be Tax Reform. There MIGHT have been tax shoveling from one set of pockets to another (guess whose pockets would end up fuller???) but that really died months ago with the Trump Administration’s universal ineptitude on Health Whatever It Was. Donald’s frustrated because he can’t scam Congress the way he has most others.
Don’t forget one of his campaign slogans “I love the uneducated”. Which btw explains his base voters. His mistake is continuing to believe that he has fooled everyone and they voted him into office. Of course, we all know that is not exactly correct. His “win” then feeds his monster ego so he ASSumes he will get whatever he wants. His entire life of getting his way from the people who feed off him have helped to create a dangerous monster.
The best and most accurate comment from Corker was “to stop pretending like you don’t know that Trump is out of his mind.” Play these words on a loop every day, all day, to the entire GOP until they take the steps necessary to remove him from office.
The only republicans taking Trump on are those with nothing to lose like Corker and McCain, both of whom are never going to run for senator again. They can afford to say the obvious things honestly, factually and bluntly that others in congress won’t say publicly about Trump. This isn’t “Profiles In Courage.” They have nothing left to lose anymore.