President Pinocchio
It’s been a very bad week for Donald Trump.
Throughout his presidential campaign Trump declared he would repeal and replace Obamacare on Day One. Boasting of his deal making skills he said it would be a slam dunk. But this week, he discovered, to his amazement, what everyone else in Washington already knew: “health care could be so complicated.”
Faced with a spectacular and humiliating failure he quickly blamed the Democrats for not supporting his deeply flawed, anti-patient Trumpcare bill.
It is more evidence of President Pinocchio’s lack of credibility, which got a heavy body blow on Monday when the directors of the FBI and National Security Agency — and many leaders in his own fractured party — publicly accused him of lying about Barack Obama tapping his phones at Trump Tower.
On top of all that, FBI Director James Comey confirmed that his agency is investigating links between the Trump campaign and Russia.
Trump’s list of lies — crowd size and the weather at the Inauguration; his victory margin and charges that 3 million illegal aliens voted for his opponent; comments on terrorism in Sweden, the murder rate in this country, his support for the Iraq war, and, most notorious, his birther campaign against Barack Obama — keeps growing like Pinocchio’s nose. For a comprehensive – and growing — list, check out the non-partisan PolitiFact.
Trump had little interest in learning the details and the nuances of the health care bill he was backing; instead he relied on his political clout and fabled deal-making skills to push the bill through.
Faced with failure on one of the major themes of his campaign and of most Republican congressional campaigns – repeal and replace Obamacare — he wasted no time in shirking all responsibility, walking away from the issue and pointing fingers of blame in all directions, particular House Speaker Paul Ryan and all Democrats.
This won’t help reverse his sinking approval rating, stuck at historic lows after only nine weeks in office. He likes to brag that his White House is running like a well-oiled machine, but that’s another lie, if you listen to leaks from inside the administration and some of its closest associates. The most common word used to describe his administration and his management style is “chaos.”
If Trump was the enormously successful businessman he brags he is, why has he been so inept in managing the White House?
He still hasn’t had a single major legislative achievement despite having majorities in both houses of Congress.
Trump has repeatedly demonstrated that he doesn’t seem to understand that the free-wheeling style, provocations, threats and inflammatory rhetoric that served him so well on the campaign trail are working against him in the Oval Office. He has failed not only to learn the difference between campaigning and governing, but that the CEO of a privately held corporation may rule by command, but the President of the United States must govern by persuasion.
