The Rupert Murdoch-owned Wall Street Journal writes that President Donald Trump has “lost the governing plot” just a year-and-a-half into his second term.
The conservative paper has published a damning editorial about the president, who turns 80 next month, writing that he is destroying any chance of policy gains by chasing pet projects and alienating Republicans in Congress.
“President Trump’s personal political obsessions are hurting his presidency, harming the chances for further policy gains the rest of this year, and putting control of the House and Senate in jeopardy,” its editorial board wrote on Friday.
The editorial, “Trump Has Lost the Governing Plot,” detailed how Trump’s petty vengeance plans have derailed his second term.
“Mr. Trump’s politics has always been largely personal, but in his second term it has become self-indulgent even by his standards,” the board wrote.
It continued, “The Trump name on everything, the Beltway ‘arch’ and other monuments to French-like grandeur. And most of all, the politics of retribution and lawfare as he seeks to ruin anyone he thinks has wronged him. He seems incapable of rising above, even as voters care much more about the economy and prices, and his job approval falls to new lows.”
Trump’s approval rating has fallen steadily since starting a war with Iran on Feb. 28. Voters are struggling with the rising cost of gas and other essentials while showing little patience for a war taking place halfway across the globe.
The Journal warns that Trump’s window to accomplish anything of substance is now, before the GOP suffers an expected bloodbath in the midterm elections.
“Trump’s Presidency will be all but over—except for impeachment 3.0—if the GOP loses control of Congress in November,” the Journal writes. “If he wants to accomplish more legislatively, he has only a few months to do it.”
The paper said Trump is on track to trash his own legacy with his various D.C. vanity projects and, now, his slush fund to pay out allies that his DOJ goons deem were victims of political retribution.
The paper wrote, “Does he want his remaining legacy to be a ballroom, an Arc de Trump, and payoffs for his friends from a fund that Republicans would denounce if a Democratic President tried it?
“Mr. Trump needs a second-year reset, or he is headed toward a second-term failure.”
