The Halfway Mark In The Worst U.S. Administration Ever-- As Trump Skips Off To Meet With Putin

Maybe Trump will find solace tomorrow tangoing in the arms of his Russian master, but everything at home is collapsing around his ears-- as should be expected by the country when someone of Trump’s calibre and lack of preparation, apptitude and qualifications is elected (sort of) to the highest office in the land-- and then allowed, by a supine Congress, to run amuck. While in Argentina, I doubt Trump will be thinking about a CNN report showing that despite a strong economy-- at strong least on paper-- the number of uninsured children in America has grown, an unprecedented reversal from Obama’s presidency. "Roughly 276,000 more children were uninsured in 2017 than the year before, bringing the total to more than 3.9 million."

Reporting for CNBC, John Harwood wrote that the two calamitous years of Trump’s all-Republican government is sputtering to an end the same way it began-- in disarray, divisiveness and chaos, marked by fanciful promises, contradictory priorities and presidential provocations that congressional Republicans haven’t attempted to rein in. The Trump regime has struggled with the very concept of government. He may have vowed-- hollow and empty as the rest of his marketing-- to make America great again, but Trump “has rattled financial markets, reduced farm exports and raised manufacturing costs with his tariff policies. As growth slows, he blames the Federal Reserve for raising interest rates and threatens General Motors for closing plants.”

The president who promised law and order, having previously fired the FBI director, fired his attorney general over the Justice Department's Trump-Russia investigation. The acting attorney general has been openly hostile to the probe.

The president who insisted Mexico would finance a border wall now wants American taxpayers to pay as a condition of keeping their government open. Congress doesn't intend to build the wall, so the government could shut down next week.

Thus completes the chaotic circle of governance by Trump and the GOP Congress: fanciful promises, contradictory priorities, presidential provocations that Republicans won't rein in. Voters responded this month by handing the House to Democrats.

Obamacare survived. The better, cheaper Republican alternative never existed.

The infrastructure plan Trump promised business and blue-collar supporters has not materialized. GOP congressional leaders prefer to spend on tax cuts.

Republicans delivered tax cuts, but not as advertised. Proceeds profited the wealthy far more than the middle class and ballooned the budget deficit, with no evidence of giving the economy more than a short-term stimulative boost.

Trump's abandonment of the fight against climate change has not revived the coal industry, which keeps closing unprofitable facilities. The president answers his own government's warnings about the climate by saying he doesn't believe them.

Republican congressional leaders want cuts in Medicaid, Medicare and Social Security to shrink government, reduce deficits and relieve pressure for tax hikes. Trump vows to protect those popular benefits.

Tough executive branch oversight, which preoccupied Obama-era Republicans, vanished when their party won the White House. Lawmakers who talked of prosecuting Hillary Clinton skipped past Ivanka Trump's use of personal email for government business.

Unlike Obama, Trump has supplied a steady stream of genuine scandal. Cabinet members and senior presidential aides have departed under ethical clouds, while Trump's former national security advisor and campaign chairman confessed to felonies.

Unprecedented turnover and turmoil hinder White House operations. Trump has filled just over half the administration jobs important enough to require Senate confirmation.

How Republicans attempted to retain power in this fall's elections exposed the chasm between their policies and public sentiment. Most voters believe the GOP tax cut has not made them better off, so Trump promised a new one.

Republicans who earlier favored repeal ran as defenders of a principal Obamacare achievement-- guaranteed coverage for people with pre-existing health conditions. Trump accused Democrats, rather than his own party, of threatening Medicare.

On Election Day, Americans issued their verdict. They cast 9 million more votes for Democrats than Republicans in House races, the largest margin in midterm election history.

That produced 40 additional Democratic House seats, far beyond the 23 needed to likely make Nancy Pelosi speaker again. Residents of three conservative states-- Idaho, Nebraska and Utah-- voted to adopt the Obamacare-authorized Medicaid expansion that state Republican officials had resisted.

And predictably, Trump’s only governmental concern is in crippling Mueller’s Putin-Gate investigation, now blatantly dangling pardons to confessed felons from his campaign if they will lie to protect him and his family. Chuck Todd and his team reported that “hours before departing for Argentina to attend the G-20 summit— where trade with China, Putin and Saudi Arabia are all important topics-- President Trump has been tweeting this morning about... the Russia probe.” Clearly mentally deranged, it wouldn’t be a stretch to imagine most Americans hoping he never comes back from Buenos Aires.

“Did you ever see an investigation more in search of a crime? At the same time Mueller and the Angry Democrats aren’t even looking at the atrocious, and perhaps subversive, crimes that were committed by Crooked Hillary Clinton and the Democrats. A total disgrace!”

“When will this illegal Joseph McCarthy style Witch Hunt, one that has shattered so many innocent lives, ever end-or will it just go on forever?”

The tweets, in fact, are just the tip of the iceberg of the ways in which the president of the United States has intervened in, criticized, thwarted, and potentially obstructed an investigation that involves him, his family and his 2016 presidential campaign. Consider:

• He’s once again dangling a pardon to former campaign chairman Paul Manafort;
• Manafort’s lawyer was cooperating with Trump’s legal defense team-- after Manafort struck a plea agreement with special counsel Robert Mueller;
• Trump dumped his attorney general (because he recused himself from the Russia probe) and inserted a Mueller critic to be acting attorney general;
• When asked why he retweeted an image of Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein behind bars, Trump replied, “He should have never picked a special counsel”;
• He admitted firing former FBI Director James Comey over the Russia investigation ("When I decided to [fire Comey], I said to myself, I said you know, this Russia thing with Trump and Russia is a made up story,” he told NBC’s Lester Holt);
• And Trump dictated the misleading statement on his son’s Trump Tower meeting with Russians.

Add up all of these actions-- and they’re not an exhaustive list-- and you see a president who’s actively intervening in an investigation that involves him.

Whatever Putin invested in getting Trump into the White House will prove to be one of the most successful and productive moves in Russian history... at least in the short run. America is in chaos and everything is falling apart. Putin's desire to foster disunity in his biggest foe has paid off in spades. America is a crippled giant, exactly what the Russians have been hoping for and plotting for, for decades.