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Trump’s Travel Ban Appeal Keeps Hitting the Courts
The administration asked for a faster appellate process after lower-court setbacks on the revised travel ban, underscoring how badly the rollout was still going.
Edition · March 22, 2017
Trump’s March 22, 2017: Health-Care Collapse and a Wiretap Hangover
On a day when the White House needed a win, Trumpworld got more evidence that its favorite strategies—bluster, scapegoating, and wishful thinking—were running into hard reality.
March 22, 2017 brought a fresh reminder that the Trump operation was still more comfortable with outrage than with governing. The House GOP’s health-care push was wobbling badly heading into the next day’s planned vote, while the administration’s wiretap allegation kept drawing skepticism and demanded more explanation than the White House could give. The result was a day defined less by achievement than by the visible strain of a presidency already colliding with Congress, the courts, and its own claims.
Closing take
By the end of the day, Trumpworld had managed to look both overconfident and underprepared, which is a brutal combination in Washington. The health bill was headed toward a public embarrassment, and the wiretap story was still behaving like a charge in search of evidence. If this is what the first quarter of governing looked like, the rest of the year was not exactly promising.
Ranked by how bad the fuckup was
5 stars means maximum fallout. 1 star means a smaller self-own.
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Trump’s Health-Care Pressure Campaign Starts Looking Like a Flop
With a House vote looming, Republican holdouts were still not coming along, leaving the administration’s push to repeal and replace Obamacare looking shaky rather than triumphant.
Story
The Wiretap Claim Is Still Hanging Around Without Proof
Trump’s allegation that Obama wiretapped Trump Tower remained unsupported as congressional and intelligence officials kept saying they had seen no evidence for it.