President Trump’s quiet bid to kill President Obama’s legacy: Trump is a prolific user of an obscure 20-year-old law to overturn protections put in place by his predecessor. Trump isn’t a do-nothing president: He’s done a lot of undoing. George Will on the “Oh, never mind” president. What happens if the president doesn’t matter? Trump realizes being president is hard. How Trump succeeds without succeeding: He has made a career of convincing people that his failures were the exact opposite — can he pull it off again? Maggie Haberman on Trump White House’s loneliness, leakiness. “Everyone tunes in”: Ashley Parker and Robert Costa go inside Trump’s obsession with cable TV.
Why Trump likes his freewheeling Oval Office schedule: The loose set-up allows friends and unofficial advisers to whisper in the president’s ear on policy issues. Personnel is policy: Timothy Taylor on presidential appointments. Remember those temporary officials Trump quietly installed? Some are now permanent employees. With 85% of Trump’s top roles unfilled, who’s running the government? “Trump tweeted about Benghazi 67 different times. But he hasn’t even nominated anyone for State Dept job of Asst Sec. for Diplomatic Security”. Nothing’s happening: There’s no news right now because Trump doesn’t actually do anything.
The White House seems excited to shut down the government. Trump has big demands and no leverage in the government-shutdown fight. When Donald Trump needs a win, America loses: His ego is driving life-and-death decisions; the results could be disastrous. Trump’s ego could cause a government shutdown. Nixon had his “madman theory”, Trump is just a madman: Nixon was smart and calculating; Trump is just ignorant and incompetent. At Yale, psychiatrists cite their “duty to warn” about an unfit president. Hillary was right: Trump is temperamentally unfit to be president.
