A progressive daily ledger of Trump-world self-owns, legal pain, policy blowback, and bad-faith chaos.
The White House’s recognition of Jerusalem landed like a diplomatic hand grenade, while the Michael Flynn guilty plea kept the Russia cloud thick over the presidency.
December 6, 2017 delivered two big Trump-world headaches. One was foreign policy: the president’s formal recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital triggered immediate condemnation, fears of violence, and fresh claims that Washington had blown up its role as a mediator. The other was political and legal: the Michael Flynn guilty plea from the prior week continued to hang over the White House and force ugly questions about what Trump knew and when he knew it. Taken together, it was a day that showed how much of the Trump presidency was still being written by self-inflicted damage control.
Trump spent the day trying to look decisive. What he mostly managed was to remind everyone that when this White House makes a move, the blowback is rarely subtle and almost never confined to one front.
5 stars means maximum fallout. 1 star means a smaller self-own.
The president’s formal recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital immediately drew warnings about violence, condemnation from Palestinian and regional leaders, and claims that the United States had quit its role as a neutral broker.
Michael Flynn’s guilty plea from the prior week kept generating fresh questions on December 6, as Trump allies tried to contain a scandal that had moved from rumor to criminal court.