President Trump exceeded expectations during his first year in office, but now he risks throwing it all away because the president is unwittingly playing into Democrat hands.
More specifically, Trump refuses to let the “shithole” scandal die. He has revived the news cycle twice in the last four days.
First when he issued a denial-non-denial shortly after bipartisan lawmakers huddled at the White House:
The language used by me at the DACA meeting was tough, but this was not the language used. What was really tough was the outlandish proposal made – a big setback for DACA!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 12, 2018
And second when he knighted the senior U.S. senator from Illinois “Dicky” Durbin:
Senator Dicky Durbin totally misrepresented what was said at the DACA meeting. Deals can’t get made when there is no trust! Durbin blew DACA and is hurting our Military.
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 15, 2018
Those mistakes at once undercut the Republican agenda and set the Democrat blueprint for 2018.
Instead of building on his forward momentum, instead of giving voters any reason to let Republicans keep their majorities, Trump is slowing down to get petty. When the GOP needs a salesman, as Mike Allen observed earlier this morning, the president is relapsing into his old reactionary self. Time spent taking shots at Democrats is time not spent pushing Republican accomplishments.
This has eroded any goodwill he established earlier on immigration reform and obscured the real flexibility he demonstrated on DACA. Should the government shut down, the White House will be hard pressed to remind the public about the bipartisan overtures they made during the early days. Instead, the public will focus on the great “shithole” v. “shithouse” debate as partisans bicker over which rude word the president used to describe immigrants.
Make no mistake. This is Trump’s fault. News cycles don’t last this long on their own. By perpetuating this one, he handed Durbin and company a club to beat him over the head with. It’s been so effective that it has eclipsed a scandal about Trump’s alleged extramarital affair with a porn star. If Democrats figure out a way to weaponize this petty presidential attention deficit disorder, they can easily take the White House out of action ahead of the midterms.
