North Korea just tested a new, longer-range missile. The fate of the tax-cut bill hangs in the balance. Absent action in Congress, the federal government is set to shut down Dec. 8. And that’s just the top of the list of challenges facing President Trump.
Which makes this a truly rotten time to be tweeting way, way off the reservation — passing on fake videos of Muslim violence, and bizarrely raising an “unsolved mystery” about MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough that was solved the year it happened.Trump has every right to crow about the economy, with the Dow and other indexes hitting record highs, consumer confidence booming and third-quarter economic growth revised to 3.3 percent.
But if the tax bill stalls in the Senate the way the ObamaCare repeal did, all that optimism could vanish — especially since it would boost the odds for big Democratic gains in next year’s midterm elections.
Yes, the president traveled to Missouri on Wednesday to rally for the tax cut, and his morning tweets also addressed the Korea challenge as well as the good economic news.
And we don’t blame him for weighing in on the day’s top shocker, the firing of Matt Lauer. But why use that news to bring up the tragic 2001 death of a staffer for then-Rep. Scarborough, when police cleared up the “mystery” at the time?
Worse was the re-tweeting of videos from a woman who turned out to be a crank British activist — videos that didn’t even show what she claimed.
These are complications Majority Leader Mitch McConnell really doesn’t need as he rounds up 50 votes for the tax cut in a Senate where several Republicans are feuding with the president while much of the media loudly regurgitates Democratic talking points on the bill’s supposed horrors.
If the president wants his allies to get anything done, he needs to stop making their jobs harder.