The Daily Fuckup — July 6, 2018 Edition

Edition · July 6, 2018

The Daily Fuckup — July 6, 2018 Edition

Backfill edition for America/New_York, tracking the Trump-world messes that landed on Friday, July 6, 2018.

On July 6, the biggest Trump-world screwup was the tariffic clusterbomb the administration had just lit on China, with the first round of levies taking effect and Beijing answering in kind. The second was the Scott Pruitt wreckage finally turning into an EPA exit, a resignation that landed as a confession of how toxic the administration’s own environmental chief had become. Both stories featured the same Trump signature: maximalist branding up front, then political cleanup once the damage had already spread.

Closing take

July 6 was a reminder that Trump’s style of governance in 2018 was less policy than pyrotechnics. One mess hit the economy, the other hit the credibility of the administration’s clean-government pose. Neither looked like a one-off. They looked like the bill coming due.

Ranked by how bad the fuckup was

5 stars means maximum fallout. 1 star means a smaller self-own.

Story

Scott Pruitt’s Fall From Grace Ends in an EPA Cleanup Operation

EPA cleanup Confidence 5/5

★★★★☆Fuckup rating 4/5 Serious fuckup

Scott Pruitt’s resignation, accepted by Trump on July 5 and still dominating the fallout on July 6, was the clearest sign yet that the EPA chief’s scandal pile had become too heavy to carry. The resignation capped months of ethics questions, investigations, and public outrage over spending, perks, and favoritism. Even Trump’s effort to spin it as a routine personnel move could not hide that the administration had spent a year defending the indefensible.

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Story

Trump’s China Tariff Gamble Starts Paying the Price in Real Time

Tariff backlash Confidence 5/5

★★★★☆Fuckup rating 4/5 Serious fuckup

The administration’s first $34 billion round of tariffs on Chinese goods took effect on July 6, and Beijing immediately matched it with retaliatory duties of its own. What Trump sold as leverage looked, on day one, a lot more like the opening shot in a trade war that could boomerang onto U.S. farmers, manufacturers, and consumers. The president had spent weeks signaling he wanted a bigger fight; Friday showed he got one.

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