“It was a trial balloon, but it didn’t work,” said Mexican economist Luis de la Calle, a trade expert who had been a senior negotiator on the pact. “Next time, nobody will believe it. People start to figure things out.”
But Mr. Trump said in the interview that he still holds his strongest card. “We’ll terminate Nafta if we’re unable to make a deal, but hopefully we won’t have to do that.”
Creeping Toward Crisis
“I don’t show my hand” isn’t a strategy to conceal a plan as much as one to conceal the absence of a plan.
.. Our commander in chief is not in full command of his emotions or facts or geopolitics.
.. The world is watching, and the world is full of dangerous men who see killing as a means of maintaining and exerting power. They see in Trump a novice and know-nothing, and they will surely test his resolve.
.. Trump has exposed himself to the world as an imbecile and burned through American credibility with his incessant lying. Even many of our allies seem confused and worried about where we stand and how we plan to proceed.
Trump is full of pride, obsessed with strongman personas, and absent of historical and geopolitical perspective. This is the worst possible situation. The man who could bring us into military engagement is woefully deficient in intellectual engagement.
.. Just days after the Trump administration shockingly signaled a softer stance on President Bashar al-Assad of Syria, Assad — possibly emboldened by America’s reversed course — unleashed an atrocious chemical attack on his own people, killing dozens.
Why Republicans failed to repeal Obamacare
How did Republicans fail to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act?
They hated Obamacare but they never understood the Affordable Care Act.
It certainly (and this turned out to be very important) didn’t mean you had any ideas about what it did, how it worked or how many people were benefiting from it … or how to replace it.
— Obamacare created a new baseline.
— They don’t have a policy bench.
tend be much more skilled at campaigning .. than at the qualities that enable governing, like compromise and fact-based analysis.
— The one policy Republicans get is tax cuts, and little else motivates/interests them.
almost 50 percent of the cuts went to millionaire households. The 400 richest taxpayers, with average income above $300 million, would get a tax break averaging $7 million.
.. the extent of this Robin-Hood-in-reverse play was too much for moderate Republicans
— They’re ungovernable
John A. Boehner predicted what just happened a few weeks ago.
.. “In the 25 years I served in the United States Congress, Republicans never, ever, one time, agreed on what a health-care proposal should look like. Not once.”
.. People are learning his “art-of-the-deal” shtick, so they know that what he says Monday may well be totally different from where he is Tuesday.
.. Newt Gingrich, of all people, was compelled to tweet out the following: “Why would you schedule a vote on a bill that is at 17 percent approval? Have we forgotten everything Reagan taught us?”
A President’s Credibility
Trump’s falsehoods are eroding public trust, at home and abroad.
If President Trump announces that North Korea launched a missile that landed within 100 miles of Hawaii, would most Americans believe him? Would the rest of the world? We’re not sure, which speaks to the damage that Mr. Trump is doing to his Presidency with his seemingly endless stream of exaggerations, evidence-free accusations, implausible denials and other falsehoods... The wiretap tweet is also costing Mr. Trump politically as he hands his opponents a sword. Mr. Trump has a legitimate question about why the U.S. was listening to his former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn, and who leaked news of his meeting with the Russian ambassador. But that question never gets a hearing because the near-daily repudiation of his false tweet is a bigger media story... Mr. Trump is his own worst political enemy. He survived his many false claims as a candidate because his core supporters treated it as mere hyperbole and his opponent was untrustworthy Hillary Clinton.