“Donald Trump the deal maker heads into the autumn of his first year in as weak a negotiating position as any president in modern times — desperate for a victory yet hardly near consensus on any major priority, still able to dominate the national conversation but so far incapable of translating that into action,” the New York Times reports.
“A summer of tumult marked by staff shake-ups, legislative failures, intraparty feuds, a racially inflammatory controversy and a nuclear-edged war of words has left him at odds with his own Republican Party and supported by barely a third of the American public. The list of daunting challenges has only grown with little sense of how he plans to tackle them beyond Twitter storms and declarations of determination.”
James Hohmann: “Once again, there is fear among top Republicans on Capitol Hill that Trump is setting them up to be the fall guys. If something doesn’t get done, the president will blame them.”
