Donald Trump’s six-month stall sparks a White House shake-up
Six months into his presidency, Donald Trump is saddled with a stalled agenda, a West Wing that resembles a viper’s nest, a pile of investigations and a Republican Party that’s starting to break away. Trump on Friday indirectly acknowledged the troubled state of his unconventional White House when he abruptly replaced his chief of staff with hard-nosed retired Gen. John Kelly, until now the Homeland Security secretary. Kelly will take the desk of Reince Priebus, a Republican operative who was skeptical of Trump’s electoral prospects last year and ultimately came to be viewed by the president as weak and ineffective. Kelly’s ability to succeed will depend on factors outside his control, including whether Trump’s squabbling staff is willing to put aside the rivalries that have sowed disorder and complicated efforts to enact policy. But the big question is can Kelly do what Priebus couldn’t? And that’s curbing the president’s penchant for drama and unpredictability, and his tendency to focus more on settling scores than promoting a policy agenda. No other aide or adviser has been successful on that front. As a candidate, and now as president, Trump has cycled through campaign chiefs and advisers but has remained easily distracted by his personal interests and only loosely tethered to any policy plans. “Trump has spent a lot of his political capital on nothing but defending his own reputation,” Alex Conant, a Republican strategist, said of Trump’s first six months in office. “There is no sustained strategy. His attention seems to shift with whatever is leading cable news at that moment.” Staff shake-ups are a tried-and-true way for struggling presidents to signal that they are ready to shift course. In 1994, President Bill Clinton elevated budget director Leon Panetta to chief of staff with a mandate to bring more discipline to a loosely organized White House. President George W. Bush made the same move with Josh Bolten in 2006 as the Bush presidency buckled under criticism of his handling of the Iraq war and the federal government’s response to Hurricane Katrina. Rarely, however, do presidents face as much turmoil as quickly as Trump has. His Friday afternoon tweet announcing Kelly’s hiring capped a tumultuous week: —his new communications director, Anthony Scaramucci, spewed vulgarities in public at Priebus. —Trump drew blunt criticism from GOP lawmakers over his attacks on Attorney General Jeff Sessions for withdrawing from the federal investigation into Russian campaign interference. —Senate Republicans’ efforts to pass legislation that would have overhauled the nation’s health care law collapsed. Some Trump allies tried to pin the blame for the health debacle on Priebus. The former Republican National Committee chairman had sold himself to Trump as a well-connected Washington operator who could help round up votes on Capitol Hill. He encouraged Trump to press forward with a health care overhaul early in his presidency. But as Republicans sorted through the rubble of their health care failure, it was Trump, not his chief of staff, who was the target of criticism. “One of the failures was the president never laid out a plan or his core principles and never sold them to the American people,” said Rep. Charlie Dent, R-Pa. He said Trump “outsourced the whole issue to Congress.” Indeed, Trump’s relatively rare public appeals for the passage of health legislation suggested he was more interested in a political win than in the details of policy. A former Democrat who does not adhere to all GOP orthodoxy, Trump frequently shifted his own stance as to whether the Republicans should repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act at once or simply repeal the law for now. By week’s end, it was clear that some Republicans simply weren’t afraid of breaking with a weakened president. GOP Sens. Susan Collins of Maine, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, and John McCain of Arizona, who was back in Washington after a brain cancer diagnosis, doomed a last-ditch bill in Friday’s early morning hours. Murkowski, who was targeted by Trump on Twitter for her opposition, showed little sign of being cowed by the president. “We’re here to govern, we’re here to legislate, to represent people that sent us here. And so every day shouldn’t be about campaigning. Every day shouldn’t be about winning elections. How about doing a little governing around here?” she asked. To this point, Trump has failed to shepherd a single substantial piece of legislation into law. His only major accomplishments have been by executive power — rolling back regulations and undoing a few of his predecessor’s achievements, like the Paris climate treaty — along with his successful nomination of Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch. Kelly, who spent his career in the military before being nominated by Trump to run the sprawling Department of Homeland Security, has limited political and legislative experience. But at least for now, he has the trust of the president. “He has been a true star of my administration,” Trump declared. Republished with permission of The Associated Press.
Hillary Clinton lost, but Republicans still want to investigate her
Democrat Hillary Clinton lost the 2016 election to President Donald Trump, but some Republicans in Congress are intensifying their calls to investigate her and other Obama administration officials. As investigations into Russian meddling and possible links to Trump’s campaign have escalated on both sides of the Capitol, some Republicans argue that the investigations should have a greater focus on Democrats. Democrats who have pushed the election probes “have started a war of investigative attrition,” said GOP Rep. Steve King of Iowa, a member of the House Judiciary Committee. Several officials from former President Barack Obama’s administration and Clinton’s campaign have appeared before or been interviewed by the House and Senate Intelligence Committees as part of the Russia investigation, along with Trump campaign officials. The GOP-led committees are investigating whether Trump’s campaign had any links to Russian interference in last year’s election. The chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, Rep. Devin Nunes, R-Calif., has continued a separate investigation into whether Obama administration officials inappropriately made requests to “unmask” identities of Trump campaign officials in intelligence reports. The House Judiciary Committee, which has declined to investigate the Russian meddling, approved a resolution this past week to request documents related to the FBI’s now-closed investigation of Clinton’s emails. In addition, Republican on that committee wrote the Justice Department on Thursday and asked for a second special counsel, in addition to Special Counsel Robert Mueller, to investigate “unaddressed matters, some connected to the 2016 election and others, including many actions taken by Obama administration.” “The American public has a right to know the facts — all of them — surrounding the election and its aftermath,” the lawmakers wrote. Republicans want to investigate the unmasking issue and also Clinton’s email scandal that figured prominently in the campaign. They also frequently bring up former Attorney General Loretta Lynch, and former FBI Director James Comey’s testimony that she told him to call the Clinton email investigation a “matter” instead of an investigation during the campaign. Nunes wrote his own letter to Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats last week, saying that his committee has learned that one Obama administration official had made “hundreds” of the unmasking requests. Even though he remains committee chairman, Nunes stepped back from the Russia investigation earlier this year after he was criticized for being too close to the White House. Rep. Mike Conaway, R-Texas, took over the leading role. The committee has conducted bipartisan interviews of witnesses; Trump son-in-law Jared Kushner appeared on Tuesday, a day after talking to Senate staff. But partisan tensions have been evident. GOP Rep. Pete King of New York, who’s on the House Intelligence Committee, said after the Kushner interview that the committee investigation into Russian meddling is a “sham.” “To me there is nothing to this from the beginning,” he said of his committee’s own probe. “There is no collusion … it’s the phoniest investigation ever.” Both the Senate and House committees have interviewed or expressed interest in interviewing a series of Democratic witnesses, including Obama’s former national security adviser, Susan Rice, and former U.N. Ambassador Samantha Power — both of whom Republicans have said may be linked to the unmasking. Rice met with staff on the Senate Intelligence Committee earlier this month, and Power met with the panel Friday. “Ambassador Power strongly supports any bipartisan effort to address the serious threat to our national security posed by Russia’s interference in our electoral process, and is eager to engage with the Senate and House committees on the timeline they have requested,” Power’s lawyer, David Pressman, said in a statement. Republished with permission of The Associated Press.
