Donald Trump hasn’t had many good weeks as president, but by any fair measure, last week seemed especially brutal.
The president demanded that Senate Republicans pass a health care bill, and they did not. He banned transgender Americans from serving in the military, and the decision immediately faced bipartisan pushback. The drama surrounding the White House staff reached a meltdown stage, culminating in the humiliating departure of the president’s chief of staff.
Trump picked a pointless fight with his own attorney general, and congressional Republicans were quick to take Jeff Sessions’ side in the dispute. The president faced pushback from police departments nationwide after he delivered a speech in which he endorsed police abuses.
And the Boy Scouts felt compelled to issue a public apology after Trump’s antics embarrassed the organization.
Despite all of these events unfolding over the course of about five days, the Wall Street Journal reports that some of the president’s more sycophantic allies were actually quite impressed with last week’s developments.
Rep. Chris Collins (R., N.Y.), the first member of Congress to endorse Mr. Trump, said that instead of turbulence, Mr. Trump last week “had one of the best weeks he has ever had.” I should note that there’s no evidence that Chris Collins was out of the country last week. The New York Republican saw last week’s developments and felt compelled to say, on the record, that Trump “had one of the best weeks he has ever had.” Baghdad Bob would be proud. Of course, breathtaking comments like these raise a few possibilities. Maybe Collins is so desperate to be a Trump loyalist, he’s willing to pretend failures are successes. Or perhaps the congressman’s affinity for confirmation bias has reached unhealthy levels. Or maybe Collins believes the rest of Trump’s presidency has been so catastrophically awful, last week really was one of Trump’s best by way of comparison.
Steve Benen is a producer for "The Rachel Maddow Show," the editor of MaddowBlog and an MS NOW political contributor. He's also the bestselling author of "Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans' War on the Recent Past." Recommended
