Trump's Big CON: His Peculiar Combination of Malevolence, Overconfidence and Cluelessness

UPDATE:  "If you had hoped that President Trump’s incompetence would save us from his malevolence, here’s some bad news: Trump’s efforts to sabotage the Affordable Care Act out of pure rage and spite are likely to have a very big impact, harming large numbers of people. . .

And the rot of bad faith and sheer malevolence at the core of Trump’s claim that Obamacare is already 'gone' needs to be fully appreciated. Trump is not only rolling back the last administration’s efforts to reach the uninsured; he is telling America that a government program that is up and running and designed to help people get health coverage they can’t afford no longer exists. This, even as he and Republicans have already confirmed that they are incapable of producing a replacement, despite his promises otherwise.

Trump’s incompetence is a key reason why he and Republicans failed to pass an affirmative plan of their own for the many millions of people currently benefiting from the ACA. But that incompetence isn’t preventing his malevolence from destroying what is already there for them."

Read the Washington Post, Trump’s incompetence will not save us from his malevolence.

"President Trump’s peculiar combination of malevolence, certainty in his own negotiating prowess, and cluelessness about the details of policy sometimes leads him to issue fearsome-sounding threats that are rooted in a baffling misread of the distribution of leverage and incentives underlying the situation at hand.

Case in point: The big news of the morning, which is that Trump will cut off paying the 'cost-sharing reductions' in his latest bid to sabotage the Affordable Care Act. Trump just tweeted that if Democrats don’t like this, they should negotiate with him to fix the law, in keeping with his previous suggestions that if he lets the law fail, they will feel pressure to do this:

Donald J. Trump
@realDonaldTrump

The Democrats ObamaCare is imploding. Massive subsidy payments to their pet insurance companies has stopped. Dems should call me to fix!
4:36 AM - Oct 13, 2017

In reality, this move actually puts more pressure on congressional Republicans than on Democrats to agree to such a 'fix.' . .

House Republicans worry they could have a major political problem on their hands if these payments are stopped, because it could harm large numbers of people in their districts. As it is, millions are enrolled in plans with cost-sharing reductions, which pay money to insurers to subsidize out-of-pocket costs, and if they are halted, insurers could exit the markets, further destabilizing them and leaving millions without coverage options. Tellingly, influential House Republicans such as Reps. Tom Cole and Greg Walden have called for Congress to appropriate the payments. . .

By the way, when Trump says Obamacare is 'imploding,' which will allegedly pressure Dems, he’s lying: The exchanges were stabilizing, and many of their travails are largely attributable to his own multiple efforts to sabotage them. The public understands this: Large majorities say Trump and Republicans will own the ACA’s problems going forward and want them to make the law work. . .

In the end Trump and Republicans are the ones likely to feel more pressure to support such a deal, which will put them in the tough spot of choosing between taking the blame for chaos in the individual markets and weathering the rage from the right that accepting a deal will unleash. Even if Trump doesn’t understand this, congressional Republicans surely do."

Read the Washington Post, Trump’s new sabotage of Obamacare actually points a gun at the heads of Republicans.