Jacob Heilbrunn

Is Donald Trump riding a rubber ducky into alligator-infested waters, as a former aide to House Speaker John Boehner suggests to Politico? It’s hard to avoid the impression that an increasingly unmoored Trump seems to groping for assistance wherever he can find it. This morning, for example, Trump, in between playing weatherman about Hurricane Dorian, retweeted the real estate tycoon Sam Zell, one of whose great accomplishments was to bankrupt the Tribune Company. Zell declared that the notion that America shouldn’t impose tariffs on countries like China is a canard: '....We can’t have a system where we run our entire economy for the benefit of other countries, which have long charged us big tariffs. Don’t keep ducking the reality.

Has Donald Trump outfoxed himself? In the past few days Trump has been lashing out at the network for publishing a poll showing that his popularity is in the doldrums and that a variety of Democratic candidates would administer a thrashing to him. 'There’s something going on at Fox,' Trump announced on Sunday. 'Something' is one of Trump’s favorite words when he wants to signify that there is some vast conspiracy out there. The hunt was on. In between bashing the turncoat Anthony Scaramucci — 'nobody ever heard of this dope until he met me' — Trump assailed Fox personality Juan Williams, calling him 'so pathetic' and 'nasty and wrong!' He piled on, claiming that Williams had beseeched him for a photo, which Williams says is baloney.

Would the Democrats be better off losing the presidency in 2020 and winning the Senate? If you think that the economy is headed for a crash, then Democrats would prosper from having Donald Trump in office to shoulder the blame. In holding both houses of Congress, they could successfully stymie Trump and head towards impeachment. Winning the presidency but losing the Senate, by contrast, might well be an exercise in futility. The grandiose legislation that most of the Democratic candidates for the presidency, apart from former VP Joe Biden, are proposing would be snuffed out. But a trifecta would be even better, putting the Democrats in the same position that the GOP enjoyed for the first two years of the Trump presidency.

The Democratic party, mired in infighting only a week ago, has reunited over racial division. New Jersey senator Cory Booker stated in a speech on Wednesday in Charleston, S.C., that the recent acts of white nationalist violence received a stimulus 'from the highest office in our land, where we see in tweets and rhetoric, hateful words that ultimately endanger the lives of people in our country.' Joe Biden took direct aim at President Trump: in an impassioned speech in Burlington, Iowa, he declared, 'in both clear language and in code, the president has fanned the flames of white supremacy in this nation.' A day earlier, Fox News host Tucker Carlson tried to douse the controversy over white nationalism by averring that the phenomenon is a 'hoax.

Here we go again. Another Trump nominee bites the dust. This time it is Rep. John Ratcliffe, who tried to pass himself off as a seasoned practitioner in the secret world of intelligence. It turned out that the dour Texan didn’t even show for meetings of the House Intelligence Committee he served on, let alone prosecute any terrorists, as he claimed on his résumé. If there was ever a case of all hat and no cattle, Ratcliffe is it.True to form, Trump himself put out a lachrymose message on Twitter, bemoaning the hostility of the news media to his favored pick. Trump babbled, 'Our great Republican Congressman John Ratcliffe is being treated very unfairly by the LameStream Media.

No sooner did Donald Trump announce the resignation of Dan Coats than the handwringing began in Washington. Coats, an establishment Republican, was the only man who could stand up to Trump. He was tough on Russia. He wouldn’t water down intelligence reports. Almost overnight he was converted into a wise man whose wisdom made him a model of rectitude and probity. In reality, Coats is something of a hack who was occupying a position that should never have been created in the first place. George W. Bush capitulated to conventional wisdom in Washington by vastly expanding the national security bureaucracy after September 11. Trump’s apparent instinct to gut the agency has been put on the back-burner. Now he’s substituting an even worse hack in the form of Rep.

Call it the Art of the Seal. When he spoke before several hundred youthful supporters at Tuesday's Turning Point USA Teen Action Student Summit at the Marriott Marquis in Washington, Donald Trump delivered a rousing talk with a large presidential seal looming behind him on a jumbo-tron. There was only one problem: the seal was fake, the creation of a 46-year-old NeverTrump Republican named Charles Leazott who is a graphic designer living in Richmond, Va.  His puckish seal was loaded, as the Washington Post noted, with phony symbols, including a Russian imperial eagle that is holding a wad of cash in its right talon and golf clubs in the other. Instead of 'E pluribus unum,' the seal states '45 es un titre — '45 is a puppet.'No one seems to know how it happened.

It wasn’t even that laborious a process. Two days after he gave a prolonged self-exculpation masquerading as a press conference to defend the sweetheart deal in Florida that he vouchsafed to billionaire pedophile Jeffrey Epstein 12 years ago, labor secretary Alex Acosta threw in the towel. For Trump the prospect of having Acosta remain was a nonstarter with the 2020 presidential race looming large. Trump was quick to note today that he will miss Acosta, whom he deemed 'a tremendous talent, he’s a Hispanic man.' Indeed Acosta was the lone Hispanic member of his cabinet. Trump even singled out an elite school as evidence of Acosta’s bona fides: 'He went to Harvard.' According to CNN, this will make for high-level vacancy 261 for the Trump administration.

H. Ross Perot issued colorful and sweeping statements, including the claim that a 'giant sucking sound' of jobs whooshing abroad would occur after passage of the North American Free Trade Agreement. He promised that he, and he alone, could fix what ailed America. He promised that as an outsider, he could clean out the Washington establishment and set wrong aright in both political parties. The fiery and paranoid Texan embodied American exceptionalism. Perot, who died on Tuesday, never reached the White House. But the Texan businessman and presidential candidate left a lasting mark on American politics. He paved the way for the presidency of another brash business tycoon, Donald Trump. A shrewd businessman, he evinced an interest in politics early on.

Are both Donald Trump and Joe Biden going to run to the center? Yesterday Trump delivered a fairly anodyne speech about American military valor that was totally bereft of his sizzling asides. Now fresh rumors are percolating about whether Trump really is preparing to dump Vice President Mike Pence for his former United Nations ambassador Nikki Haley. Trump explained today that Pence had to cancel his trip to New Hampshire because of an 'interesting problem' but would not say what it was other than that all would be revealed in a couple of weeks. Another person who may get the heave-ho is national security adviser John Bolton.

The Washington, DC city council is having none of it. 'Tanks, but no tanks', it tweeted at Donald Trump. Trump may shy from actual warfare but he has arranged a military extravaganza masquerading as a July 4 ceremony. While there may be no 'brand new Sherman tanks,' as Trump promised — they were retired after the Korean War — the Pentagon is furiously trying to figure out if it can safely transport the 60-ton M1 Abrams tank over Memorial Bridge without collapsing it. A thunderstorm might also cause any tanks to sink into the ground of the National Mall. It would be awkward symbolism for the man who promised to drain the swamp.

At first it looked as though the Democratic debate in Miami last night was going to be sickening. Candidate after candidate described their personal illnesses or medical traumas, ranging from car accidents to prostate cancer, to try and demonstrate their sympathy for the healthcare challenges that ordinary Americans face. But then the debate took a fiery turn as Kamala Harris targeted Joe Biden for destruction, zeroing in on his conciliatory remarks about working with segregationist senators and his past opposition for school busing. John Cassidy observed, 'Considering the debate over all, Biden’s performance raised fresh doubts about his preparation, age, grasp of the environment in which he is operating, and basic political skills.

Are the Democrats running against Mitch McConnell rather than Donald Trump? McConnell’s name was invoked several times last night as a synonym with malice and treachery. And Trump? Not so much. The candidates seemed to want to deal with Trump by elision rather than confronting him directly. But Trump himself weighed in on the proceedings from Air Force One to blow a loud raspberry: 'BORING!' This wasn’t quite fair. The differences between the candidates, who amounted to a warm-up band for tonight’s main performance, was a study in the contrasts that mark the Democratic party. Tim Ryan and John Delaney sought offer up the unadulterated old time gospel of the Democrat of yore.

Donald Trump is on the skids. It won’t take much to knock him out. So far, Democrats appear to be sticking with Joe Biden rather than casting more than flirtatious glances at other, more left wing candidates. Not so fast. As Henry Olsen reminds us in the Washington Post today, Trump is far from finished. The heck with the popular vote. The only votes that count are getting to 270 in the electoral college. Trump squeaked by in 2016. He could do it again. Trump, after all, may be most dangerous when he appears to be on the ropes. Tomorrow night Trump will kick off his re-election campaign in Orlando, Florida. He’ll be pumped. Fox News says that his supporters are already lining up to see the great man. Trump has a lot to prove.

Donald Trump can no more remove Kellyanne Conway from his administration than the Louvre could banish the Mona Lisa. She has been a stalwart defender of Trump both during his campaign and presidency. There are few members of the Trump camp that possess her talent for the zinger. While the old fighters like Jeff Sessions, Steve Bannon and Corey Lewandowski fell by the wayside, Conway has proven the supreme survivor. Even Sarah Huckabee Sanders, Trump announced on Thursday afternoon on Twitter, is headed back to Arkansas.