One week ago today, lashing out at the picture drawn of his presidency in Michael Wolff’s instant bestseller, “Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House,” Donald Trump embarked on a campaign to show his competency.
It began with a new Trump branding effort.
“[T]hroughout my life, my two greatest assets have been mental stability and being, like, really smart,” he tweeted. “I went from VERY successful businessman, to top T.V. Star to President of the United States (on my first try). I think that would qualify as not smart, but genius and a very stable genius at that!”
It was the beginning of a week of self-inflicted wounds confirming the basic premise in Wolff’s book: that the president is “incapable of functioning in his job.”
On Tuesday, Trump – looking to show he was on top of things – invited Republican and Democratic lawmakers to the White House for an on-camera meeting about immigration. Instead, the president briefly agreed to a Democratic plan for extending legislation to protect the Dreamers, forcing Republican leader Kevin McCarthy to cut in and remind him that his position was supposed to be quite the opposite. The meeting ended with Trump saying he would sign any immigration bill Congress put before him.