Unsustainable: Trump Is Exhausting the Opposition In Order to Get His Way

DRAINED IN THE SWAMP
‘Unsustainable’: Trump Is Exhausting the Opposition In Order to Get His Way
The president has thicker scar tissue than you. And he knows it.
Asawin Suebsaeng
Sam Stein
01.29.18 5:24 AM ET


One year in, the state of the union in Donald Trump’s America is exhaustion.

Trump’s presidency has proven to be a uniquely overwhelming experience, one that’s strained America’s political institutions, stressed its governing officials, and produced a never-ending series of five-alarm political controversies.

It is, in many ways, the polar opposite of the no-drama Obama ethos of the last administration. And those who know the president say that’s by design. Trump has thicker scar tissue than most and his modus operandi has been to claw, scrape, and nag the opposition until they finally acquiesce. It defined his business life and it’s followed him into politics.

“It is going to be unsustainable for people who don’t get him or haven’t been around him,” said Sam Nunberg, a former Trump campaign aide who was fired from the election team. “If you work for him for many years like I have—and trust me I’m not trying to get a job here—but this would be normal for me.”

To wit, in the first 12 months of this presidency, federal courts axed multiple versions of Trump’s travel, aka Muslim, ban, the White House has been engulfed in a cascade of Russia scandal turmoil, Obamacare repeal tanked (repeatedly and spectacularly), immigration deals stalled, the government shut down, there’s been a sloppily handled nuclear standoff with North Korea, equivocation over the murder of a protester by a neo-Nazi, the president clashed with the family of a fallen soldier, he accused a top Democrat of facilitating a terror attack in New York, called a nearby island (and various African and foreign countries) a “shithole,” said Haitian immigrants all have AIDS, flirted with firing a special counsel, ended up firing his FBI director, endured loud criticism for mixing his private business dealings with his governing responsibilities, and lost a humiliating Senate election in Alabama after backing a candidate credibly accused of molesting teenage girls.

This doesn’t touch on the recent scandal involving revelations that Trump allegedly had an affair with a porn star while his wife was at home with their months-old child, after which he reportedly paid hush money to keep said porn star quiet. Such a news item would have crippled any president in the past. With Trump, it was dumped into the “LOL nothing matters” category of political, or celebrity, news.

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