by Michael Goodwin
Battered, bruised and beaten, Donald Trump faces a grim reality. Halfway through his term, his presidency is at low tide.
The polls have cratered and his necessary retreat over using a shutdown to get wall funding had some erstwhile supporters spitting venom at him.
His usual tormentors, meanwhile, are riding high. Nancy Pelosi drew her first blood as speaker, Chuck Schumer kept Senate Dems in line and the anti-Trump media are celebrating the president’s pain.
If that weren’t trouble enough, special counsel Robert Mueller is still scalp-hunting. His indictment of Roger Stone, while not dinging Trump directly, keeps the Russia, Russia, Russia pot boiling and gives House Dems more grist for their pile-on probes.
It doesn’t help that, ethics-wise, Stone now joins Paul Manafort and Michael Cohen in giving Trump’s former circle a resemblance to the freakish bar scene in “Star Wars.”
Still, Trump is not the first president to put himself behind the eight ball. Sooner or later, they all do.
The challenge now is a clear-eyed acceptance of reality and laser-like focus on the key question: What is my presidency for?
It’s not a metaphysical quiz. The goal is to separate fact from fantasy and see what remains possible in light of the national mood and the 2020 calendar.
What Trump cares about most, and what he should devote the rest of his presidency to, is obvious: fixing the immigration crisis, with border security the essential first step.
In large measure, it is why he ran and why he was elected. It is the heart of America First.
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SOURCE: New York Post
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