Economics and politics columnist John Cassidy thinks he knows why President Donald Trump keeps throwing a wrench in the plans of his own administration.
Writing for the New Yorker on Monday, Cassidy said that he thinks Trump has lost touch with the financial realities of the average American.
Last week, Trump was set to sign a bipartisan housing bill that would have been the perfect combination to help both homebuilders and homebuyers.
“Although the bill seemed unlikely to have much immediate impact on the housing crisis, affordable-housing advocates and business groups alike said that it could have a significant impact over the longer term. In political terms, the message would be sent to voters that Washington isn’t oblivious to their concerns,” wrote Cassidy.
All Trump had to do was sign it. He even declared June “National Homeownership Month.”
Republicans were excited, patting themselves on the back during a press conference, not knowing that Trump had just blown up their legislation in a Truth Social post.
But as Cassidy explained, it’s part of a pattern with Trump in his second term. He is growing increasingly detached from the issues that matter to most Americans while being more focused on symbolic fights, loyalty tests and short-term political theater. So, instead of taking the “win” of a bipartisan success, he torpedoed it in another example of self-sabotage.
“The larger context is that the President seems to be losing the plot,” Cassidy said. “This year, he’s been confronted by a series of political setbacks and disasters — the Supreme Court striking down his blanket tariffs; widespread revulsion at ICE’s actions in Minnesota and elsewhere; a furor over the delayed release of the Epstein files; an ill-conceived war in the Middle East that caused gas prices to surge; and, lately, an algae-infested reflecting pool, which sends the message that he’s not even an effective builder. The obvious response to Trump’s woes — one that some of his aides have been urging upon him since last year — is to focus relentlessly on the issue that got him reelected: the affordability crisis.”
There are a few cases in which Trump’s populism peeks out, like the accusation that oil companies were price gouging Americans by jacking up fuel prices and refusing to cut them when crude oil fell.
“But consistency and focus seem to be beyond him,” bashed the columnist.
He recalled that in December, Trump mocked the “affordability crisis” as nothing more than a Democratic “hoax.” Earlier this month, he cheered, “I love inflation!” So, refusing to sign a housing affordability bill that he supported only “demonstrate[s] anew his inability to maintain a constant course and present[s] another gift to his political rivals.”
Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) said he would send the bill to Trump on Monday. It starts the clock on the ten-day rule. If a bill isn’t signed in ten days and Congress remains in session, then the bill automatically becomes law. If Trump vetoes it, he runs the risk of having a veto-override vote that would pit his own GOP members against him and against their constituents.