It was brilliant and typically shrewd for the author of The Art of the Deal to take the very first offer the Democrats made and ask for nothing in return.
.. Less obsequious observers on the right claimed that this was the long-prophesied moment. The seventh seal had been broken. Donald Trump was “pivoting” at last. “The pivot is real and it’s spectacular!” proclaimed Ben Domenech, the publisher of The Federalist.
.. The former New York Democrat holds no deep love for ideological conservatism, and many of his favorite issues — protectionism, infrastructure, etc. — are more naturally part of the Democratic portfolio.
.. For years, Republicans said that if they could win both Congress and the White House, there’d be nothing they couldn’t do. Whether this was a lie or just wishful thinking is debatable. Regardless, they failed for several reasons.
- The Republican majority in the Senate is much narrower than the Democratic majority was when Obama was elected.
- Many GOP leaders never thought Trump would win, and so they hadn’t prepared for victory.
- Also, the Republican party is divided along a host of fault lines,
- and a large swath of the Republican caucus has no experience at actually governing.
- .. The problem is there’s another reason Congress has disappointed the president and his most ardent supporters: Donald Trump doesn’t know what he’s doing.
.. Trump is “being pulled in a bunch of different directions, and because he doesn’t have any strong ideological anchor, or deep knowledge of the issue, he ends up sort of not knowing what to do.” Instead, the president goes with his gut on everything, letting himself be baited by negative TV coverage.
Trump Faces Deal-Making Challenges as Congress Returns
“Legislatively, September may be the longest month of the year, with several must pass items that face an uphill climb,” said Doug Heye, a longtime Republican strategist. The president’s decision to push the immigrant program to Congress “only makes that harder, on an issue that for years Republicans have struggled to make any headway on. The question is whether this was a strategic decision by the White House.”
His self-proclaimed deal-making skills could also be put to the test in foreign policy as he decides how to respond to North Korea’s nuclear saber-rattling while separately seeking to renegotiate the North American Free Trade Agreement with Mexico and Canada and broker peace between Israelis and Palestinians. And he may alienate America’s traditional European allies if he tries to scuttle Mr. Obama’s nuclear agreement with Iran by declaring Tehran out of compliance over their objections.
.. As he pressures North Korea to curb its nuclear program, he has belittled South Korea for “appeasement” and threatened to tear up its trade deal with the United States. As he lobbies lawmakers to back his legislative priorities, he has castigated Senator Mitch McConnell, the majority leader, and other Republicans crucial to passage.
.. Mr. Trump’s allies argue that he had a better summer than the Washington conventional wisdom would suggest and that he has a path forward. They contend that after the fights of early August, the president took on the mantle of a national leader with a vigorous and visible response to Hurricane Harvey, and that cleaning up the devastation may prove both a rallying point and a strategic leverage.
.. “It may sound counterintuitive, but the president heads into September with a bit of wind at his back,” said Michael Dubke, who served as his White House communications director. “Harvey was handled well, tax reform is back on track, the debt ceiling showdown will be pushed to a later date and while there are no good choices in North Korea, the president’s national security team is second to none.”
.. It’s not a mistake to disagree when you disagree; it is a mistake to suggest that somehow this president, who was elected just as the Constitution prescribed, and has the responsibility to lead the country, that somehow we need to not work with this president.”
.. On Tuesday afternoon, Mr. Trump will host a group that has been dubbed the Big Six to discuss his tax overhaul —
- Mr. McConnell;
- House Speaker Paul D. Ryan;
- Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin;
- Gary D. Cohn, the president’s national economics adviser;and
- Senator Orrin G. Hatch of Utah and
- Representative Kevin Brady of Texas, the Republican chairmen of the tax-writing committees.
.. Allies said Mr. Trump’s approach to negotiations, however, is to hold out for the best deal possible until the last moment, so it is too soon to judge.
.. “My style of deal-making is quite simple and straightforward,” he once wrote. “I aim very high, and then I just keep pushing and pushing and pushing to get what I’m after. Sometimes I settle for less than I sought, but in most cases I still end up with what I want.”
.. But those who have studied his career in real estate and business said that it has been marked by as many failed deals as successful ones.
- He bought an airline that failed.
- He bought a football team in a league that collapsed.
- He filed for bankruptcy protection multiple times.
“If you look at his record, there are a lot of deals that didn’t work out,” said Michael D’Antonio, a Trump biographer. “So if you think about the true record of performance, he is very good at promotion and creating the idea that he is a deal maker, but not very good at making actual successful deals.”
.. some Democrats argue that Mr. Trump’s very weakness may yet prove to be a boon. Since legislating entirely with fellow Republicans has yet to yield the results Mr. Trump had hoped, he may have more incentive to work with Democrats on areas where they could find agreement, particularly
- infrastructure and the
- tax code.
Democrats would also like to work on legislation stabilizing the Obama health care markets.
Trump begins ‘negging’ portion of NAFTA negotiations
Ahead of the meeting between Mexico, Canada and the USA in Mexico City to renegotiate the North American Free Trade Act, Trump has begun what he terms the ‘negging’ portion of the trade negotiations.
The President is said to have discovered the term, which describes bringing down someone’s self esteem by making snide comments to make them more vulnerable to manipulation, in a book called The Game by “pick up artist” Neil Strauss. Trump has been applying this technique in his communication with his children, business partners and now sovereign countries.
.. Donald Trump Jr “everytime I call him he answers the phone by saying how happy he is to speak to his 4th favourite child. But I know he’s just building a strong negotiating position for when I ask him for a business advice, or a hug.”
.. Other examples of Trump’s presidential negging includes pretending to not remember Mitch McConnell’s name and telling French president Macron that he’s “so smart, like Kellyanne Conway smart”
.. Mexican president Pena Nieto chose not to respond to a twitter DM that asked if negotiations would be in Spanish or a “real” language.
.. “Although it is common for governments to try to project strength ahead of negotiations, it is unusual for them to do it in such a petty and childish way.”
Trump’s demand to build border wall could upend sensitive negotiations on Capitol Hill
During the presidential campaign last year, Trump vowed to force Mexico to fund construction of a wall along the U.S. border that he said could be up to 50 feet tall.
.. The Department of Homeland Security prepared an internal report earlier this year that estimated the cost of building a wall along the entire U.S.-Mexico border would be $21.6 billion.
.. Rasmussen Reports, a conservative-leaning firm, conducted an automated poll of likely U.S. voters late last month and found that a solid majority of Americans oppose building a border wall “to help stop illegal immigration,” with 37 percent supporting Trump’s proposal versus 56 percent against. That is similar to a poll conducted in February by the nonpartisan Pew Research Center that found Americans opposed the wall 62 percent to 35 percent.
.. “Low approval ratings raise legislative risks,” Goldman Sachs analysts wrote. “In the near term, we believe there is a 50% chance of a brief government shutdown, as the president seeks to solidify support among his base by embracing more controversial positions, despite needing Democratic support to pass spending legislation.”