Day 803: Trump gives Democrats political gifts, causes GOP nightmares, forgets where his father was born
What a needlessly error-prone 24 hours for Donald Trump.
Politically, he couldn’t have handed Democrats bigger gifts. After seeing Republicans get trounced in the 2018 election that he framed around healthcare and his effort to repeal the Affordable Care Act, Trump — out of nowhere — decided to frame the 2020 election around the exact same thing.
After Republicans have failed to come up with any plan to replace Obamacare for nearly a decade, Trump wants to make the argument, yet again, that ‘no really, we have something this time’ in the run-up to the next election day.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) has reportedly told Trump on many occasions that repealing the ACA is no longer a priority for Congress and to stop mentioning it. Trump, however, can’t help himself and tweets out invented plans at 10:30 at night.
Trump is also continuing to threaten completely shutting down the southern border, which would be a disaster for American businesses. (Last week he alleged, against both common sense and economic principles, that the U.S. would profit from the move.)
Republicans in border states and even red states not on the border are rolling their eyes at his bluster and calling him out on his bluff, even as the White House continues to claim that it’s anything but. Meanwhile, a Politico report notes that Trump’s aides are desperately trying to talk him out of a massive mistake.
President Donald Trump’s senior economic aides are scrambling to impress upon him the potentially dire economic costs of his threat to shut down the U.S.-Mexico border, according to two people familiar with the matter.
Both Kevin Hassett and Larry Kudlow, the president’s top economic advisers, have shared papers and data with Trump over the last 36 hours, illustrating the way economic growth could slow even if the president shut down the border for just one day — not to mention the effect on the flow of goods, raw materials and the U.S. supply chain.
Republican leaders do not share Trump’s view on closing the border. McConnell said on Tuesday that while he agrees there is a border crisis, stopping all border crossings is not the answer.
“Closing down the border would have potentially catastrophic economic impact on our country and I would hope we would not be doing that,” he said.
Despite the White House begging Democrats to bail Trump out of his self-inflicted mess, they’re content to sit back and watch him try and wriggle out of yet another jam.
Finally, in what might — impossibly — make more sense than the Obamacare or southern border proclamations, Trump apparently forgot where his father was born.
803 days in, 659 to go
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