I listened to Hugh Hewitt the morning after it was released; he was stunned that he couldn’t get any of the Republican House leadership [sic] on his show to talk to his conservative audience about the biggest piece of legislation in Trump’s first term.
.. It says something about the relationship between Ryan and Mitch McConnell that Ryan hasn’t used the Senate as a scapegoat.
.. During the campaign, Trump promised he would repeal the law entirely, eliminate the individual mandate, permit the sale of health insurance across state lines, allow individuals to fully deduct health-insurance premium payments, require price transparency from all health-care providers and allow consumers access to imported, safe, and dependable drugs from overseas.
.. The bad things to come out of the Trump administration so far:
· Tweeting that President Obama tapped his phones at Trump Tower, an accusation that no one could find any evidence to support.
· Not merely the inability to pass health care reform on the first try, but the clumsy way it was handled, with Trump clearly not caring about the details and Bannon trying to bully the House Freedom Caucus, telling them they had “no choice” but to vote for it.
· Trump continues to make big promises with few details on how he’s going to make it work. Last night he said, “I know that we are all going to make a deal on health care. That’s such an easy one.” Is it? Is it really?
· The administration had a series of defeats in court; the initial travel ban appeared to be hastily written, ignored career lawyers of DHS, and created chaos at the nation’s airports.
· The FBI is investigating whether Trump’s campaign coordinated with Russia on illegal hacking of places like John Podesta’s computer and the DNC and other efforts to influence the election.
· The outlook for tax reform is complicated by the failure to get health-care reforms done first, as the reforms were supposed to create the savings to pay for the tax cuts. Ditto for the dreams of a big infrastructure bill.
· It’s very early, but there are signs that the “energized Democratic grassroots” storyline isn’t just media wish-fulfillment. Just as Republicans woke up and got active as the Obama era began in 2009, Democrats may be the same…
· We’re cool with a president golfing now, huh, conservatives?
· We don’t care if White House visitor logs are no longer accessible to the public, huh? We’re fine with the Trump administration being less open and transparent than the Obama administration?
Yesterday I wrote about one of the more bewildering and unnerving early stumbles of the administration, a persistent complaint about the “deep state” while failing to nominate anyone for hundreds upon hundreds of important positions. Yes, the Senate could confirm the 40 or so nominees faster, but the Trump administration just looks flatly unprepared for one of the key tasks of governing.
Obama is Trump’s go-to scapegoat for White House woes
The president has blamed his predecessor for leaks, protests and even for priming Obamacare to explode after he left office.
.. The former president has emerged as the perfect scapegoat for Trump. The 44th commander in chief is a revered Democratic Party figure who is both loathed by conservatives and, in keeping in line with the precedent of past presidents, unlikely to publicly speak out against his successor.
.. Trump said 2017 was supposed to “be a disaster for Obamacare,” which he and Republicans more broadly campaigned on repealing and replacing.
“That’s the year it was meant to explode because Obama won’t be here,” Trump alleged. “That was when it was supposed to be even worse.”
.. “I want every American to know that action on Obamacare is an urgent necessity,” he said in his address. “The law is collapsing around us, and if we do not act to save Americans from this wreckage, it will take our health care system all the way down with it. If we do nothing, millions more innocent Americans will be hurt — and badly hurt. That’s why we must repeal and replace Obamacare.”
‘If something happens’: Trump points his finger in case of a terrorist attack
President Trump appears to be laying the groundwork to preemptively shift blame for any future terrorist attack on U.S. soil from his administration to the federal judiciary, as well as to the media.
.. “If something happens blame him and the court system. People pouring in. Bad!” Trump wrote in a tweet Sunday.
.. Then on Monday, Trump seemed to spread that blame to include news organizations. In a speech to the U.S. Central Command, the president accused the media of failing to report on some terrorist attacks for what he implied were nefarious reasons.
“ISIS is on a campaign of genocide, committing atrocities across the world,”
.. Trump did not offer a single example of an attack that had gone unreported to support his accusation.
.. Trump’s terrorism blame-game is in keeping with how he ran his campaign, looking for scapegoats at nearly every turn. He often blamed his own failings — a poor debate performance or a gaffe or a primary loss — on the media or other perceived enemies, and he fed his own conspiracies that his adversaries were out to undermine him.
.. “Trump acts instinctively rather than strategically,” said David Frum, a senior editor at the Atlantic and a White House speechwriter under President George W. Bush who is sharply critical of Trump. “His instinct to pass blame is very strong. . . . I don’t know whether people will succumb to this.”
Trump’s approach is not without risk. He could come across to many Americans as thin-skinned if he skirts the responsibilities of being commander in chief and looks to assign blame to outside forces.
.. In his commentary, Trump has ignored the screening measures and other counterterrorism precautions that have long been in place by U.S. customs and border officials.
..Asked whether the White House had evidence of Islamic militants “pouring in” to the country, a phrase Trump used in at least two tweets, Spicer said only: “I’m not going to get into specific information that the president has.”
You Don’t Kill the Scapegoat
In common parlance, a “scapegoat” is an entity that takes the blame for problems that are not truly of their making. By giving the community a target on which to vent its rage and violence, the scapegoat unites the remainder of the community and makes it possible to endure through whatever problems the scapegoat was blamed for.
But as the name clearly implies, the scapegoat isn’t destroyed — it escapes.