“It makes all of their normalizing and ‘Trumpsplaining’ look silly and hollow. Trump betrays everyone: wives, business associates, contractors, bankers and now, the leaders of the House and Senate in his own party. They can’t explain this away as a 15-dimensional Trump chess game. It’s a dishonest person behaving according to his long-established pattern.”

— GOP strategist Rick Wilson, quoted by the Washington Post, on his party’s congressional leaders.

A Trump adviser tells Mike Allen that after a tumultuous seven months in office, it had finally dawned on the president: “People really fucking hate me.”

“For someone who has spent his life lapping up adulation, however fake, it was a harsh realization. This is a man with an especially acute need for affirmation. This week’s bear hug of Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer opened Trump’s eyes to one solution: Stop doing things that people hate, and start striking deals.”

An important point: “But we can’t overstate the level of despair among Republicans.”

Playbook: “OMB Director Mick Mulvaney was thrashed by his former House Republican colleagues yesterday in a closed door meeting, GOP lawmakers called Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin a Democrat and scoffed at his requests and Gary Cohn is still on the outs with President Donald Trump. Those are the three people most intricately involved in tax reform, which the White House wants done by the end of the year.”

Politico: “Rumors of Gary Cohn’s demise in Donald Trump’s White House have swirled for weeks. But Cohn is intent on remaining with the administration to finish tax reform — though it’s unclear how long he would stay beyond its passage.”