It is only Wednesday, but the exhausting pace of Donald Trump’s Washington makes time fly.
The big stories from last week weren’t just about messaging. There was everything from the bewildering signal sent by first lady Melania Trump’s jacket and White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders being denied service at a Virginia restaurant to the inciting language from Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Calif.) and the rise of the radical left with 28-year-old democratic socialist Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez defeating Rep. Joe Crowley (D-N.Y.) with (among other positions) a pledge to abolish the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). And beyond the surface of everything that is happening, there are the real effects of President Trump’s policy decisions. The tone and substance emanating from Washington is potentially disastrous for incumbents. Immigration matters to a lot of voters and the economy matters to almost every voter – and for Republicans, these are core issues. So, where are we?
First, it is shocking that Harley-Davidson would have to consider moving some of its domestic production overseas because of a looming trade war. The stock market is in decline as uncertainty grows, and there is a sense that any prospect of “zero tolerance” at the border has collapsed. The “catch and release” practice of the Obama era appears to have returned. Wasn’t Republican rule supposed to produce the opposite of all this?
Vanity Fair’s Bess Levin notes, “Harley isn’t the only U.S. company getting dinged by the Dealmaker-in-Chief’s ‘good’ and ‘easy to win’ trade war.” American businesses big and small could take…
