Trump is a bad president, but he’s bad in two ways. He’s bad because his policies are evil, but he is also proving to be bad in the sense of being hopelessly ineffective. The latter trait is a good thing if you are concerned about the former trait. The former trait was obvious to anyone paying attention during the campaign, but the latter trait — which couldn’t be known until he had actually taken office — is revealing itself everyday.
Let’s look at the bill of particulars, courtesy of Axios:
- Speaker Ryan and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell are going their own way on tax reform. Hill sources believe his original targets, including a 15% corporate rate, are dead.
- SecDef Mattis didn’t immediately embrace his full ban on transgender troops.
- His Justice Department won’t drop the Russia probe.
- Courts won’t allow his full Muslim ban.
- Mexico won’t pay for his wall.
- Congress won’t pay for his wall.
- The Senate won’t pass his promised health-care reform.
- Gary Cohn and Sec State Tillerson won’t tolerate his Charlottesville response.
- North Korea won’t heed his warnings.
- China doesn’t fear his trade threats.
- CEOs won’t sit on his councils.
- Mexico and Canada won’t bend to his will on NAFTA.
And in fact, NOW Defense Secretary Mattis is “suspending” the transgender ban until he can fully assess the impact. Although, he asserts that Trump’s order gave him the power to do this (and therefore, he is not contradicting Trump), he is… let’s be real… contradicting Trump.
Granted, a weak Trump isn’t ALWAYS a good thing. North Korea, for example, not being threatened by him makes everyone a little unsteady. But for the most part, Trump’s initiatives are DOA.
Greg Sargant notes that Trump is going to Missouri tonight to sell a “populist” tax plan, which is nothing more than trickle-down economics.
In reality, what we will actually hear at this speech is the death rattle of whatever pretensions to genuine economic populism Trump has ever harbored, if any. Trump will make it official that this rhetoric is merely a disguise for the same old trickle-down economics we have heard for decades — confirming that his economic agenda is in sync with the very same GOP economic orthodoxy that he so effectively used as a foil to get elected.
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Trump’s plan, then, will be sold as targeting the well-connected few. But Axios reports on a remarkable quote about this from another White House official, who was pressed on how exactly Trump’s plan will target the well-connected few, given that it is expected to slash the top rate and corporate rate and repeal the estate tax.
“How I would look at this, from an American worker’s perspective, it’s basically a ‘made in America tax,’ “ the official said, adding that it would benefit workers to bring down the business tax rate to “level the playing field” with the “rest of the world.” Officials added that Trump’s plan would “un-rig” the economy by ending “special interest loopholes that have only benefited the wealthy and powerful few.”
But the broad strokes of that formulation, despite its packaging in the rhetoric of economic nationalism, actually constitute trickle-down economics.
“That’s trickle down,” Steven Rosenthal, a senior fellow at the Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center, told me today. “This whole notion that cutting taxes on rich guys and corporations is going to stimulate capital investment — that’s trickle down warmed over once again. We’ve seen this movie before. It always turns out badly.”
I hope enough congresscritters can prevent this from happening.
Meanwhile, Trump himself seems to be understanding that he is ineffective.
After reading the false reporting and even ferocious anger in some dying magazines, it makes me wonder, WHY? All I want to do is #MAGA!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 30, 2017
Of course, he takes a shot at the media, but this time it is of a whine (“All I Want To Do Is MAGA”, which is a terrible song title, by the way).