New York Times Columnist and attorney David French told fellow columnists that he has absolutely no compassion for the Republicans who nailed themselves to President Donald Trump’s collapsing house.
“We’re seeing this combination of factors happening right now,” said French speaking to a Saturday panel of Trump’s attempt to create a wildly unpopular slush fund, under his exclusive control, to disburse money to people of his choosing. “Trump is [pushing the fund] at the same time that he has flexed an enormous amount of control over the G.O.P. at the grass-roots level, with defeating five Indiana senators who defied him on redistricting, getting rid of Congressman Thomas Massie, getting rid of Senator Bill Cassidy.”
But there are two ominous things underway as Trump does this, he added.
“One of them is that he is showing everybody that — and he’s putting these Republicans even more in a box than they were — they’re in a terrible position, for which I have no sympathy. And the terrible position is if they defy Trump, they are in all likelihood going to lose their job in a primary, if not now, maybe the next cycle.”
“[But] if they don’t defy Trump, they are tying themselves to — as Jamelle just outlined — they’re lashing themselves to the mast of a sinking ship,” he continued. “So, it’s either you go down with the ship or you go down at the hands of primary voters. Those are your two options. And I have no sympathy because they could have put a stop to all this, as we know, after Jan. 6 — any healthy, functioning political party would have put a stop to this after Jan. 6, but they chose not to. They made their bed, but you know what? They also made our bed as well, and we’re all in it. We’re all in this together now.”
Columnist Jamelle Bouie said Trump’s slush fund was already dead in the water just because it's proposed by a such an unpopular president — even before it was criticized as horrendous grift.
“I have to imagine that this is wildly unpopular with the public for a couple of reasons: The first is that just by proximity to Trump — Trump is so unpopular that this becomes unpopular by extension. But the other thing is, it’s such a striking example of the president’s fundamental indifference to the economic prospects of ordinary Americans. It’s like Trump saying, ‘I don’t care about that.’”
It does not help that Trump unleashed a colossal gaffe earlier this month before leaving for his flight to China, when he was asked if he takes Americans' economic well-being into consideration as he negotiations and end to his self-started war with Iran.
“I don’t think about Americans’ financial situation. I don’t think about anybody," Trump answered with a quote that has reverberated over the media as Trump demands taxpayer money for his expensive ballroom, his arch and now this unsupervised $1.8 billion fund.