Trump the great negotiator is actually inept and untrustworthy. Imagine that.by digby
Yes, it turns out he can’t negotiate his way out of a paper bag. That his whole image is fake news. His empire was bankrolled by his father and he managed not to lose money on Manhattan real estate. (He did manage to lose money on casinos which seems almost impossible.) He became a celebrity for being a celebrity, like Kim Kardashian, and he made a lot of money doing it. He’s NOT a genius at anything but self-promotion which turned out to be a potent talent at getting elected. It’s pretty useless at the actual job of being president.
President Trump campaigned as one of the world’s greatest dealmakers, but after nine months of struggling to broker agreements, lawmakers in both parties increasingly consider him an untrustworthy, chronically inconsistent and easily distracted negotiator. As Trump prepares to visit Capitol Hill on Tuesday to unify his party ahead of a high-stakes season of votes on tax cuts and budget measures, some Republicans are openly questioning his negotiating abilities and devising strategies to keep him from changing his mind.
The president’s propensity to create diversions and follow tangents has kept him from focusing on his legislative agenda and forced lawmakers who might be natural allies on key policies into the uncomfortable position of having to answer for his behavior and outbursts.For instance, Trump’s news conference last Monday with Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), which was orchestrated to project GOP unity on taxes, instead gave birth to the self-inflicted controversy over Trump’s treatment of fallen soldiers, which set the White House on the defensive and dominated the national media for seven days.
Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.) spent weeks cooking up a health-care bill with Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.) — and felt he suddenly had Trump’s attention and encouragement when the president called him Oct. 7.
Dinner with his wife interrupted by the call, Alexander said he sat on a curb outside a restaurant for 15 minutes talking about health care with Trump, whom he said supported reaching a bipartisan deal.
Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) said Trump called him one morning that same week, interrupting his workout at the gym to tell him, “Let’s do some bipartisan work on health care!”
But this past week, Trump created whiplash. On Monday — just moments after Alexander and Murray released the blueprint for a short-term authorization of federal subsidies that help lower-income Americans afford coverage but that the administration had just halted — Trump said he supported the effort.
A few hours later, however, the president was decidedly cool to it.
“There was a lot of momentum building for Lamar’s effort, until the president changed his mind after encouraging him twice to move ahead,” Sen. Bob Corker (R-Tenn.) said. “You know, who knows where he’ll be? Maybe where he is this very second?”
Corker said his fellow Tennessean has “the patience of Job” to negotiate with Trump, referring to the biblical prophet who suffers one curse after another but keeps his faith.
If the absence of any signature legislation is an indication, the dealmaking skills that propelled Trump’s career in real estate and reality television have not translated well to government.
Tony Schwartz, a longtime student and now critic of Trump who co-wrote the mogul’s 1987 bestseller “The Art of the Deal,” said Trump’s dealmaking modus operandi is, “I am relentless and I am not burdened by the concern that what I’m doing is ethical or truthful or fair.”
Read the whole piece. It’s very interesting.