Michael Bloomberg, who is considering making a White House run in 2020, gave a brutal assessment of President Trump’s first two years in office on Sunday, blasting the Syrian troop pullout, the partial government shutdown and the tumbling stock market.
“Each of these mistakes has a common denominator: Trump’s recklessly emotional and senselessly chaotic approach to the job,” the former New York City mayor wrote in an opinion piece on the website of his media company, Bloomberg News. “At the halfway mark of this terrible presidency, one has to wonder how much more the country can take.”
“There are many reasons to be optimistic about 2019. The increasingly isolated man in the Oval Office is not one of them,” he continued.
Recalling the Trump administration’s actions in the past week, Bloomberg warned that the developments exemplify “its destructive effect on competent government in Washington – and it should give all Americans, in all parties, cause for concern.”
Bloomberg noted that Trump’s announcement to withdraw militarily from Syria led to Defense Secretary James Mattis to resign in protest, the first to do so since the position was created in 1947.
Trump’s “obsession with a border wall that won’t work but will waste billions of taxpayer money” created an impasse between Congress and the White House that resulted in a partial government shutdown.
“And in between, the stock market dove to its worst week since 2011, as investors concerned about Trump’s taste for trade wars delivered a vote of no-confidence,” Bloomberg wrote.
The three-term mayor lamented the resignation of Mattis, who he lauded as “one of the last remaining seasoned and respected professionals at the top of the administration,” and warned of more chaos to come because of the lack of checks to the president’s impulsive and irrational behavior.
“In short: One of the few people protecting Trump from Trump is leaving. And unfortunately, few Republicans in Congress have shown any appetite for that job, preferring instead to appease his worst instincts – as the debate over a wall along the U.S.-Mexican border continues to show,” Bloomberg wrote.
He urged Republicans to take notice of gains made by Democrats in November’s mid-term elections in which they won control of the House.
“Unless something changes – unless, in particular, Republicans in Congress start showing some spine – two more years might be enough to test whether we can sustain Trump’s model of bad government,” Bloomberg wrote. “This past week, we got a glimpse of what the beginning of the collapse may look like – and what it may ultimately cost us.”