Trump seems more and more alone and lonely. Strange how somebody elected on his purported strength to make deals, forge and maintain relationships, looks increasingly…. isolated.
His wingnuts-on-steroids budget draft is about to get picked apart and very likely rejected.
The GOP-led Congress has a whole lot of skeptical questions about his anti-Mexico wall proposal.
His anti-Muslim travel ban got taken down again by federal judges, and few GOP leaders seem interested in going to the mat for Trump on this, or frankly on anything lately.
When the kill-Obamacare effort collapses, which it will, Trump will look weak on that as well. And he’ll lash out at Congress, but there’s a lot of them ready to lash back. He seems to have fewer and fewer true friends in the House and Senate these days.
More and more stories coming out about how Trump’s staff is spending a significant % of their time thrashing about in a fear-based, paranoid, turf-fighting state of mind…. as opposed to, like, just focusing on their jobs.
And of course the “Barack Obama wiretapped me!” debacle. Nobody (except Spicer who has to, and even he couldn’t deal with it yesterday) wants to stand with Trump on this one. VP Pence ducked when asked, and he’ll do that again every time if he’s pressed on it.
It’s interesting to see Trump’s supporters and former supporters backing away at key moments rather than standing with him. Yesterday Rick Santorum appeared on Erin Burnett’s segment on CNN, and on the subject of “Obama wiretapped me!”, Santorum joined those backing away:
"We're not in an election anymore, and it's not his opponent he's throwing off… I think it's him that he's throwing off…. and who he's hurting is not a rival, he's hurting himself, because he's now the president and it doesn't matter whether he blames Barack Obama or not. (…...)"I'd like to see the president come out there and talk about what he knows, not what he's read in the paper. I understand you read things in the paper, I see things on TV. But when you're the president of the United States, the assumption is that you have better information than what's in 'The National Enquirer,' or even 'The New York Times….”
That’s something of a burn, folks. Santorum endorsed Trump back in May 2016, and in fact Trump was a huge fan of Santorum’s prescriptive book on how conservatives should try to win even bigger among (white) blue-collar America. The two of them spoke several times on these exact themes, which ended up carrying Trump into the White House through narrow victories in WI, MI, PA etc.
Santorum is not exactly a power player these days, but his choice to separate from Trump and publicly rebuke him like this…. well, it is indicative. Think about it, which leaders in Congress are standing loyally with Trump these days, on the above issues? None.
So: a stack of defeats coming for Trump on budget, healthcare, wiretap lunacy, even the MexicoWall might get rejected, and the TrumpRussia investigation has yet to unfold, with more turns and events to come. And his staff (such as they are) seem ill-prepared to defend him fully.
I know Trump has been “misunderestimated” (to borrow that Dubya-ism) for far too long. Throughout his entire campaign and his taking the presidency, an event that looks like an unclear and obscene mashup of election-and-theft, with definite assist from Comey and at least some assists from Russia, full extent still not known.
We kept on underestimating Trump’s ability to stay on top. But does anyone else see him getting more and more isolated now, and likely headed for worse?