The Donald's Dumpster Fire

President Trump has a majority in Congress. So why has his agenda largely gone up in flames?

- Matthew Cooper

IT WAS CHAOS—even by the standards of Donald Trump. In one 24-hour period in late July, the president announced—on Twitter—that the U.S. would ban transgender people from serving in the military. Despite Trump’s claims to the contrary, the move stunned the military brass, who said the president’s tweet was not the law of the land.

If that wasn’t bizarre enough, hours later, the new (and already departed) White House communications director, Anthony Scaramucci, accused Reince Priebus, then White House chief of staff, of leaking information to the press. “If Reince wants to explain that he’s not a leaker, let him do that,” Scaramucci fumed on CNN. On top of that, he told The New Yorker that Priebus is a “fucking paranoid schizophrenic.” (Trump later replaced his chief of staff with John Kelly.) Across town, Senate Republicans were unable to repeal Obamacare, while the president continued his campaign to bully Attorney General JeffSessions into resigning. The reason: Sessions’s March decision to recuse himself from the investigation into Russian interference in the presidential election. Meanwhile, as that scandal continued to play out, the White House refused to say if Trump would sign a sanctions bill against Russia (as well as Iran and North Korea) that Congress overwhelmingly passed. (The White House later signaled he would sign it.)