Presidents
have had worse weeks than the one ending Donald Trump's first 100 days in
office, but most of the examples I can think of include resignation and worse.
So far this week (and he still has one more day!) Trump has retreated or been
defeated on his Mexico wall, on NAFTA, on sanctuary cities, and on health care
reform. The administration went through something like three positions on North
Korea. Trump rolled out a tax reform "plan" that not only has been ridiculed from
all sides, but is also basically dead on arrival; Trump's one-page of
bullet points is vague enough that any Congressional product may resemble it,
but he's not likely to be a significant player in shaping what House and Senate
Republicans choose to do.
Beyond
that, Trump gave a series of interviews which mostly served to furnish up new
humiliations for him, whether it was complaining to Reuters about how unexpectedly
hard the job was or obsessing to AP about cable TV news. Other 100-days
profiles featured White House staff and Trump friends basically
saying the president is ... a moron? “If you’re an adviser to him, your
job is to help him at the margins,” said one Trump confidante. “To talk him out
of doing crazy things.”
A
toddler? Advisers have tried to curtail Trump’s idle hours, hoping to prevent
him from watching cable news or calling old friends and then tweeting about it.
That only works during the workday, though—Trump’s evenings and weekends have
remained largely his own.
Also
this week, investigations on the Trump-Russia scandal continued with new
revelations about former National Security Advisor Michael Flynn, and a misfire
by Ivanka Trump (rapidly walked back) reminded everyone of Trump's other
big scandal involving conflicts of interest, nepotism, emoluments, and more.
I
suspect I'm missing a few more. The good news? It's always possible Trump
could at least somewhat turn it around. He could hire a real chief of staff
empowered to clean up the White House. He could start doing the work he's
supposed to be doing -- learning about policy and process. Yes, he does have
some potential assets to build on if he is capable of doing so. For
that matter, he could still divest his holdings and put an end to what is
basically a lawless presidency.
