“In pitching the $1.5 trillion tax overhaul, Steven Mnuchin, the Treasury secretary, has said repeatedly that the plan will pay for itself through a surge of economic growth and that over 100 people in Treasury are ‘working around the clock on running scenarios for us,'” the New York Times reports.

“Mr. Mnuchin has promised that Treasury will release its analysis in full. Yet, just one day before the full Senate prepares to vote on a sweeping tax rewrite, the administration has yet to produce the type of economic analysis that it is citing as a reason to pass the tax cut.”

Mike Allen: “Exhausted by the Trump presidency? Brace yourself: White House officials expect Trump to be even more outrageous and cocksure in coming months.”

“Officials tell us Trump seems more self-assured, more prone to confidently indulging wild conspiracies and fantasies, more quick-triggered to fight than he was during the Wild West of the first 100 days in office.”

“Imagine Trump if he signs a huge tax cut into law, which seems likely, amid soaring stocks and rising economic growth. Imagine if Roy Moore wins in Alabama, which seems likely, too. It surely won’t humble Trump — or hem him in. He’s like the Incredible Hulk, after the media and Mueller made him mad.”

“President Trump this week disseminated on social media three inflammatory and unverified anti-Muslim videos, took glee in the firing of a news anchor for sexual harassment allegations despite facing more than a dozen of his own accusers and used a ceremony honoring Navajo war heroes to malign a senator with a derogatory nickname, ‘Pocahontas,'” the Washington Post reports.

“Again and again, Trump veered far past the guardrails of presidential behavior. But despite the now-routine condemnations, the president is acting emboldened, as if he were impervious to the uproar he causes.”

“If there are consequences for his actions, Trump does not seem to feel their burden personally.”

“Something is unleashed with him lately. I don’t know what is causing it. I don’t know how to describe it.”

— New York Times reporter Maggie Haberman, talking on CNN about President Trump’s recent behavior.

“He’s one of the best presidents we’ve ever had.”

— Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-UT), quoted by MSNBC, on President Trump.

Greg Sargent: “But such incredulity misses the deeper significance of this stuff. The brazenness of it is the whole point — his utter shamelessness itself is meant to achieve his goal. In any given case, Trump is not trying to persuade anyone of anything as much as he is trying to render reality irrelevant, and reduce the pursuit of agreement on it to just another part of the circus. He’s asserting a species of power — the power to evade constraints normally imposed by empirically verifiable facts, by expectations of consistency, and even by what reasoned inquiry deems merely credible. The more brazen or shameless, the more potent is the assertion of power.”