Trump’s Out of Political Capital Already

Too bad for the so-called president that he can’t borrow political capital from his friends in the Russian mob, because he appears to be running low. This happened today:

Conservative House Republicans rebuffed an offer by President Trump Thursday to strip a key set of mandates from the nation’s current health care law, raising doubts about whether House Speaker Paul D. Ryan (R-Wis.) has the votes to pass the bill.

Trump met at the White House with the most conservative House Republicans, hoping to close a deal that would help ensure passage of the party’s health-care plan by shifting it even further to the right. But the session ended with no clear resolution, and some lawmakers said they needed more concessions before they would back the bill.

Apparently the bill is still being rewritten even as Paul Ryan is trying to get the House to vote on it today.  And why is today so gosh-darn important? Because today is the seventh anniversary of the passage of the Affordable Care Act. [Update: No vote today. They’ll try again tomorrow.]

House Republicans have been working to gut the bill even further from the version that the CBO said would cut 24 million people off from getting health care. But word is that there are enough Senate Republicans worried about their future re-election campaigns that such a bill is unlikely to pass in the Senate.

Greg Sargent wrote a couple of days ago:

The fate of the GOP health plan appears to hang in the balance, with GOP leaders still struggling to find the votes to pass it in the House. There is widespread disagreement both about the bill and its prospects for passage. But one thing appears to be widely agreed upon: President Trump has now “taken ownership” of this bill.

Yet Trump’s ownership of the GOP plan is not having the desired effect. It doesn’t appear to be moving many Republicans — indeed, GOP critics of it appear to be hardening in their opposition — and a new poll out this morning finds that support for it is dropping.

Possibly even Republicans can find the daily Gallup tracking poll showing approval for Trump slowly deflating like an old tire — he’s now consistently in the high 30s rather than the low 40s — and a new Quinnipiac poll finds substantial majorities of Americans could not say Trump is honest, has good leadership skills, or cares about most Americans. A majority still finds him intelligent, however, which means there are a few more scales to fall from a lot more eyes.

Perhaps they hadn’t yet read the latest Time magazine interview of Trump, in which he comes across as a spoiled 12-year-old, and a not very bright one at that. It’s so bad that after a few paragraphs I had to double-check it wasn’t a spoof. See also 9 bonkers things Donald Trump said in his new exclusive interview with Time.