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Once optimistic that he could use the powers of his office to coerce timely victories, Trump now finds his efforts face political headwinds, regulatory burdens and sheer reality. He is days away from reaching the last feasible point in his tenure when promising something in “two weeks” will improve his electoral chances. Some outside the White House, including his former national security adviser, have been openly concerned about what Trump might orchestrate to create political ground.
Furious at his MPs for not executing him, Trump is reconsidering his possible second Cabinet, people familiar with the matter said, though he remains superstitious and does not like to discuss who he would reappoint if re-elected, believing it to be bad luck. At the White House, efforts to achieve successful policies in the last hour are scattered at best as staff work through a viral outbreak. Trump himself has proven less than helpful, offering contradictory edicts via Twitter.
“We’ll see, you know, you can only do what you can do,” Trump said during a call to Fox Business Network Thursday morning, the fifth time he has spoken to a Fox network since returning home from the hospital. “But there has never been an administration that has done so well.”
The disappearing lifeguards have enraged the president. Rather than big new announcements from the Rose Garden or on an electoral battlefield, Trump has decided to call Fox’s hosts from the White House and criticize senior cabinet members for failing to deliver by Nov. 3.
Even the most loyal
Even officials considered the most loyal and therefore the safest, such as Attorney General William Barr, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and Secretary of the Treasury Steven Mnuchin, have not escaped Trump’s wrath. Trump declined to respond when asked during a Newsmax phone call on Wednesday if he would ask Barr to serve a second term.
“I have no comment,” he said. “I can’t comment on that. It’s too early. I’m not happy.”
A day later, it was Mnuchin, currently leading unsuccessful negotiations on Capitol Hill over a new stimulus package, being whipped by the president.
“He hasn’t come home with the bacon,” Trump said.
In other settings, Trump has berated his aides for failing to line up important announcements in the final weeks of the campaign that could help improve his standing with key constituencies where he has lost ground, such as seniors or women. And even after returning to the White House from his coronavirus hospitalization, Trump remained upset with his chief of staff for telling reporters that his early symptoms were concerning.
This fall has still been filled with election season surprises, from a Supreme Court vacancy to new Middle East diplomacy to the president’s own Covid diagnosis and hospitalization. But the articles Trump had planned to promote in the final days of the presidential race are failing, an experience unknown to a man used to getting what he wants.
“When I met Donald, almost everything fell apart on his way. There was always someone there to clean up his mess. There was always someone there to hand him hundreds of millions of dollars to rescue him,” said Mary Trump, the president’s niece who recently published an account. scathing of his upbringing. “He’s in a completely different universe right now, where there’s no one left, really, to help him get out of the jams that he keeps getting into. And I think that’s the pressure he feels, honestly.”
Justice Department problems
It has also become clear that a separate investigation by US Attorney John Durham into the origins of the Russia investigation will not produce the kind of damning information that Trump once hoped would convince voters that he had been unfairly persecuted during the early years of his presidency.
Current and former justice officials have said that the Durham investigation has yet to find evidence to bring significant charges against people Trump considers his political enemies. And Barr has also told Republican lawmakers in recent weeks not to expect a report from Durham on his findings before Election Day.
Durham is notoriously slow and methodical in his investigations, which generally last years, according to people familiar with how he works, a subject that has frustrated Justice officials and Trump’s congressional allies.
He has also angered the president, who has directed his fury at Barr, accusing him of stagnation.
“Why should they get a free pass because it took too long to do the research?” he said Thursday during his phone interview on Fox Business. “You want to wait until after the election to be nice? It’s very sad. In fact, it’s pathetic.”
Trump has been no less lenient on Pompeo, whom he accused last week of delaying posting some of Hillary Clinton’s emails. The top diplomat responded by saying he was working quickly to get them out before Election Day.
“We will do everything we can to make sure that the American people have the opportunity to see all that we can produce fairly,” Pompeo said Wednesday, declining to say why it was necessary for the State Department to take such steps for three weeks. before. the chose.
Trump has also been outspoken in expressing his frustration with government health agencies for allowing regulations to take effect that essentially guarantee that a coronavirus vaccine will not receive emergency use authorization before November 3. Trump once openly speculated that a vaccine would be available before November 3. elections, a prospect whose political advantages he did little to dismiss.
But after a delay of several weeks by White House officials, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration made clear in new guidelines last week that full safety data on the candidate vaccines will be required sooner. emergency clearances are granted, making it difficult, if not impossible, for any vaccine manufacturer to apply for an emergency clearance before Election Day.
Trump raged in the hours afterward: “Just another political success!” – and he still sounded disgusted Thursday morning.
“I would have done it before the elections and it could still be a little,” he said. “There is a lot of politics.”
Similarly, the policy has stymied Trump’s talks on a major new stimulus, which he tried to cancel last week before abruptly reversing course. The move, which caused the stock to plummet, puzzled many of the president’s allies, as Trump himself had been eager to write new checks to Americans in the weeks leading up to the election.
After Trump said Thursday morning that he was willing to go higher than his administration’s current $ 1.8 trillion offer, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell was quick to say no such proposal. it was in sight.
“That’s not what I’m going to put on the court,” he told reporters in Kentucky.
Foreign policy
Trump has tried to make last-minute advances in foreign policy, traditionally an area where presidents have greater leeway. He has touted new normalization agreements between Israel and the Arab Gulf nations and his administration is renewing momentum to finalize a nuclear deal with Moscow, in the hope that a deal could force China to reconsider its position on the trilateral arms talks. .
But even there, Trump has a hard time keeping his promises. The highest-ranking US general publicly rejected an announcement that the US will aggressively reduce the number of troops in Afghanistan by the end of the year, regardless of conditions on the ground.
The absence of victories has left some former officials wondering what the president might come up with when the elections conclude.
“I think you must see that the political environment for him is becoming increasingly problematic, so his desire to do what he wants to do in the final weeks of the campaign I think is becoming more insistent,” said the former security adviser John Bolton, now a critic of Trump – said in an episode of “The Ax Files” this week, listing a new arms deal with Russia or a fourth summit with North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un as the types of outlandish October surprises. that Trump could invent.
“The flashy, flashy, bright lights type of event, that’s what a Donald Trump would think,” Bolton said. “And I think that possibility remains even as the elections approach.”
