Weekly Trump Report Card: President ‘Cave-in’

President Trump had a pretty rough week. The Republicans caved in on everything conservatives and Trump wanted in the new spending bill, he inexplicably congratulated Russian President Putin on his re-election, and the stock market tanked on Thursday after he announced $60 billion in new tariffs on Chinese imports. He finally gave National Security Adviser H.R. McMaster the heave-ho and replaced him with a conservative hawk.

Conservative Ohio Congressman Jim Jordan said that the new spending bill – all $1.3 trillion of it – may be the worst bill he’s ever seen. The Republicans got rolled on this one. It fails to provide more than a pittance of money to build Trump’s border wall, it precludes the president from cutting federal money sent to sanctuary cities, and reportedly reinstates the federal government’s power to deprive citizens of their firearms if the government determines they can’t manage their own finances. After threatening to veto it, the president signed the bill on Friday.

In a telephone call with Putin, Trump congratulated him for winning last week’s “election” in Russia. It wasn’t very hard for Putin to have won the election because his principal opponent wasn’t allowed on the ballot. He apparently didn’t even mention the attempted London assassination of Russian double agent Sergei Skripal and his daughter, apparently by Putin’s FSB agents. Trump and White House Chief of Staff John Kelly were reportedly outraged that the content of the call was quickly leaked, a fact that may have precipitated McMaster’s firing.

The president said he is cordial to Putin because he wants Putin’s help with ISIS, North Korea, Iran, Syria and Ukraine, all problems which Putin either created or exacerbates and won’t stop doing so. It’s simply bizarre that Trump believes Putin is going to help him with any of those problems.

The president announced that he was granting temporary waivers of his new tariffs on steel and aluminum to EU nations, South Korea, Australia and a few other allies. But his new tariffs on Chinese goods caused the Dow Jones Industrial Average to dive. China will, of course, retaliate against American imports. Trump’s tariffs and China’s retaliation will hurt the US businesses and consumers significantly.

The president announced that H.R. McMaster will leave in early April and be replaced by former UN ambassador John Bolton. Bolton is much tougher on Iran and North Korea, and his appointment – following the removal of Secretary of State Rex Tillerson – again signals that the president is going to ditch the Obama-Iran nuke deal.

Grade D+

John Zogby

In Catholic school we learned about ‘sins of omission’ and ‘sins of commission’. For President Trump this was a very commissionable week. For starters he imposed new tariffs on Chinese goods and the Chinese are threatening serious retaliation. That was enough to cause three major U.S. stock exchanges to plunge and record the worst week in over two years.

Next he fired his national security advisor, H.R. McMaster, and hired a serious foreign policy hawk, John Bolton, who is an uncompromising ideologue, takes an extreme hard line (i.e. military option) on both Iran and North Korea, and now leads a council with hardly a moderating voice. The president ran on a non-interventionist and non-meddling platform in 2016 and is now surrounded by interventionists and meddlers.

Trump threatened a government shutdown over the federal budget only to sign it.

He got into an unseemly pissing match with Biden. And on a very personal level, he has lost most of his legal team and replaced them with those who fit the only criteria he has left — they said yes. And now there are three women who are front and center to possibly drag him into depositions.

Grade F

John Zogby is the founder of the Zogby Poll and senior partner at John Zogby Strategies. His latest book is We are Many, We are One: Neo-Tribes and Tribal Analytics in 21st Century America. Follow him on Twitter @TheJohnZogby

Jed Babbin is an Examiner contributor and former deputy undersecretary of defense in administration of former President George H.W. Bush. Follow him on Twitter @jedbabbin