President-elect Donald Trump has thrown away what should have been the honeymoon period of his incoming presidency — and replaced it with a shambolic mess, MSNBC’s Steve Benen wrote Monday.
And he added that the chaos of Trump's pre-presidency is entirely of his own making — and could have easily been avoided.
Benen wrote that the weeks before inauguration are usually “a period of time in which an incoming American leader is able to bask in his or her victory, welcome congratulatory wishes, and imagine a world of exciting possibilities before the real work begins on Inauguration Day.”
But in Trump’s case, he wrote, “the Republican keeps stepping on rakes.”
Benen’s prime example was last week’s crisis over the spending bill — and Trump’s sudden addition of demands to increase the debt limit.
“A stopgap spending bill was working its way through the legislative process on Capitol Hill, which generated very little interest from Mar-a-Lago — that is, until late Wednesday afternoon, when Trump published an item to his social media platform demanding that congressional Republicans add a debt ceiling increase to the bill. Failing to do so, Trump added, would be 'a betrayal of our country.'
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“Roughly an hour and a half later, he published a follow-up piece, adding that any Republican who would be 'so stupid' as to approve a spending bill without increasing the debt limit 'should, and will, be Primaried.'
“On Thursday, Trump echoed his demand. A day later, he did it again.”
What puzzled Benen was why.
Republicans were openly confused about why he was bringing up the debt ceiling, while Democrats suggested Trump himself was displaying mental decline.
And the bill that passed Friday completely left out Trump’s demand — suggesting he was not as powerful as he suggests, Benen wrote.
“The one thing Trump wanted was the one thing he didn’t get,” he went on.
“He didn’t have to suffer this embarrassment. In fact, he didn’t have to do anything. He chose to intervene, in the 11th hour, with an odd and unnecessary demand, which Republicans rejected and left Democrats wondering aloud about his mental health.
“If this were a rare setback in an otherwise flawless transition phase, it’d be easier to overlook. But the opposite is true: In the seven weeks since Election Day, Trump and his team have careened from one failure to another, as part of a pre-inaugural process that can only be described as shambolic. What’s more, by some measures, it’s getting worse