Power Up: Problems pile up at halfway mark of Trump’s presidency

Credit: Mark Wilson, Getty Images file photo

At the White House

WE’RE HALFWAY THERE (‘I ALONE CAN FIX IT’)The longest running government shutdown, a crumbling base, multiple investigations, a slowing economy, leaked outbursts and a dearth of dealmaking. These are the things that define President’s Trump’s halfway mark in the White House, casting a shadow over a nascent presidential campaign and threatening to imperil any semblance of legislative normalcy in the two years ahead.

  • “People saw him as some sort of business wizard. That’s all disintegrating. It’s like McDonald’s not being able to make a hamburger,” Republican strategist Mike Murphy told our Josh Dawsey and Philip Rucker.
  • “The shutdown also has accentuated several fundamental traits of Trump’s presidency: his apparent shortage of empathy, in this case for furloughed workers; his difficulty accepting responsibility, this time for a crisis he had said he would be proud to instigate; his tendency for revenge when it comes to one-upping political foes; and his seeming misunderstanding of Democrats’ motivations,” Rucker and Dawsey report.

View the complete article by Jacqueline Alemany on The Washington Post website here.