Cutting Social Security and Medicare benefits used to be the "third rail" of U.S. politics — touch it and you get burned — but "the new third rail in Republican politics is criticizing [President] Trump," Washington Examiner correspondent David Drucker writes at Vanity Fair. Off the record, however, "Republicans believe Trump is bungling an opportunity to capitalize on his unrivaled street cred with the conservative grassroots to create the political space for the Republican-controlled House of Representatives to overhaul a significant portion of the nation's outdated — horrible, a joke, the president might say — immigration laws."
The inability or unwillingness of Trump, "perhaps the most hardline anti-immigration voice in a generation" and a self-professed dealmaking maven, to make a concerted push for his party to constrict America's immigration laws is "one of the more curious aspects" of Trump's presidency, Drucker writes. And unless Trump "radically" changes his approach to "overcome the complete lack of trust on Capitol Hill" he has engendered, that won't change, he adds:
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