An insightful comment on Gab by American Nationalist:
Trump’s handling of the AHCA went from questionable to spectacular the moment Jeanine Pirro laid the smackdown on Paul Ryan after he tweeted to watch her show tonight.
It was as I hoped – Trump pledged his support for Ryan’s catastrophe so he could isolate and destroy him – publicly.
Whether that was his original intent or whether this is an example of the God-Emperor adroitly turning lemons into lemonade is irrelevant. The former may be more comforting, but the latter is actually more encouraging; it’s nice when things go according to plan, but it’s even better when one is able to turn setbacks into advances.
Fox News host Judge Jeanine Pirro, whose show President Trump urged his followers on Twitter to watch earlier in the day, opened her program at 9pm on Saturday by calling for Speaker Paul Ryan’s resignation.
“Ryan needs to step down as Speaker of the House. The reason, he failed to deliver the votes on his healthcare bill, the one trumpeted to repeal and replace ObamaCare, the one that he had 7 years to work on; the one he hid under lock and key in the basement of Congress; the one that had to be pulled to prevent the embarrassment of not having enough votes to pass.” Pirro said in her opening statement. “Speaker Ryan, you come in with all your swagger and experience and sell them a bill of goods which ends up a complete and total failure and you allow our president, in his first 100 days, to come out of the box like that, based on what?”
What made Pirro’s fiery comments about Ryan especially notable is that they came hours after Trump tweeted to encourage his followers to watch “Justice with Judge Jeanine.”
Another reason I find the “lemonade” theory to be more convincing is that Obamacare was never a particular focus of Trump’s, which was why I didn’t understand how it had somehow become a supposed priority when it was, and is, primarily a legislative priority for the House and Senate Republicans. Of course, we all know they’re more or less useless, and the Ryancare debacle is only the latest example.
Regardless, I hope Trump has learned that he’s got to work with the more conservative legislators and isolate the mainstream moderates if he’s going to get anything through the House and Senate. The moderates will cave under pressure, the conservatives are much less likely to do so, having successfully resisted most moderate Republican pressure since the first Bush amnesty attempt.
Frankly, I’d like to see him stop getting pulled into these conventional battles and stay totally focused on the strategic ones, such as neutralizing the anti-Constitutional judiciary and making sure the wall is built before the end of his first term. War, Trade, and Repatriation are the three presidential priorities, everything else is trivial in comparison.
Meanwhile, Scott Adams notes that his model for the dynamic media narrative is actually running ahead of schedule:
With the failure of the Ryan healthcare bill, the illusion of Trump-is-Hitler has been fully replaced with Trump-is-incompetent meme. Look for the new meme to dominate the news, probably through the summer. By year end, you will see a second turn, from incompetent to “Competent, but we don’t like it.” I have been predicting this story arc for some time now. So far, we’re ahead of schedule.