New year, new start? Not in President Trump’s Washington

WASHINGTON (AP) — So a lot for a new 12 months, new begin.

For Donald Trump, that energy-sapping 2017 cocktail of blistering presidential tweets, salacious White House infighting and jaw-dropping feuds with international adversaries has given technique to, nicely, extra of the identical.

“We are off and operating,” mentioned Josh Holmes, a longtime adviser to Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell. “It’s superb that the tempo that we set in 2017 has continued with equal vigor.”

Indeed, the primary three days of 2018 — sure, simply three days — introduced a new array of targets for the president and the return of some acquainted foes. As a part of a 17-tweet barrage on Tuesday, Trump picked a struggle with the “deep state” inside his personal authorities that he believes is making an attempt to undermine his presidency, and he raised the specter of battle with North Korea by asserting that his “Nuclear Button” was larger than that of Pyongyang’s chief Kim Jong Un.

By Wednesday, Trump had turned on his former prime adviser Steve Bannon, accusing him of getting “misplaced his thoughts.” The scathing assault, issued with the formality of an official White House assertion, adopted the publication of excerpts from an unflattering e book in which Bannon accuses the president’s namesake son of holding a “treasonous” assembly with a Russian lawyer throughout the marketing campaign.

Across Washington, vacation cheer was instantly a distant reminiscence.

“I really feel exhausted,” mentioned Rick Tyler, a Republican strategist who suggested Texas Sen. Ted Cruz in his marketing campaign towards Trump in the 2016 GOP presidential main. “I really feel just like the 12 months has obtained to be over by now.”

Trump rattled Washington in his first 12 months in workplace by blowing previous the guardrails which have historically ruled what a president does and does not say and by steadily choosing fights that appear far much less consequential than the weighty points that land on a commander in chief’s desk. He needled pleasant international leaders like Britain’s Theresa May, accused former President Barack Obama of wiretapping his New York skyscraper and unfold rumors about media personalities he deemed overly essential.

To be certain, nobody in Washington anticipated Trump to be a special man when he returned from Christmas trip at his property in Palm Beach, Florida. By now, Washington has largely come to grips with the fact of a president who usually begins and ends his day with tweets on matters which might be a thriller to even his closest aides till they pop up on their smartphones. And whereas some Trump advisers have grown beleaguered by the president’s seemingly insatiable urge for food for a feud, few count on that to vary or put a lot effort into making an attempt to carry him again.

Yet there was nonetheless a hope, each in the White House and on Capitol Hill, that the president would possibly return to Washington keen to construct on the passage of a sweeping Republican overhaul of the tax code in the waning days of December. The invoice handed with solely Republican votes, and polling reveals the sophisticated laws is deeply unpopular with Americans, leaving the president and his get together with a tall process in the event that they hope to experience the tax overhaul to electoral victories in the midterm elections.

Trump has tweeted a handful of messages in 2018 in regards to the tax invoice. But he generated much more consideration together with his missives taking purpose on the media and his unfounded declare of credit score for the truth that no business airways crashed in 2017.

Some Republicans cringed. Tyler mentioned that in the early days of 2018, the White House had already “misplaced the communications battle over what tax coverage is designed to do.” And he put the blame squarely on Trump, saying the president “can’t be trusted together with his personal message.”

On Capitol Hill, the place the Senate returned to work, most GOP lawmakers girded themselves for one more 12 months of what has turn out to be their acquainted ritual: fastidiously critiquing Trump’s most sensational feedback with out criticizing the president himself. Asked about Trump’s North Korea button bluster, Sen. John Cornyn of Texas, the No. 2 Senate Republican, mentioned merely: “It’s in all probability higher to not tweet about such issues.”

Just 361 days to go till the calendar flips once more.

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Follow Julie Pace at http://twitter.com/jpaceDC