Unfit AND ignored?

Trump told GOP leaders on Friday that he doesn’t think relying on public-private partnerships to fund infrastructure projects will work. [...] On Friday Gary Cohn, the director of Trump’s National Economic Council, told Fox Business, “January’s going to be a big month for us on infrastructure.” The next day he described the plan in detail — including public-private partnerships — to those assembled at Camp David.

[...]

So now in addition to promoting an infrastructure plan that’s probably going nowhere in Congress, White House officials will have to explain why their boss seems to show little enthusiasm for a plan they’ve been crafting for months. It’s becoming more apparent why Cohn, when asked how long he’ll stay at the White House, said on Friday, “I’m here today.”

  NY Magazine

White House officials and Hill aides confirmed the president’s comments. Another White House official briefed on the comments said that Trump was musing aloud and that the administration still planned to pursue public-private partnerships for infrastructure. This person, though, said Trump had continually expressed skepticism behind the scenes about such a plan.

“He doesn’t think they will work,” this person said.

  WaPo

It's hard to imagine him giving it enough thought to have an opinion. And I started to say that I wondered who told him that approach might not work, until I read the Post article, where it becomes obvious.

In September, though, Trump began musing to Democrats and others that the public-private partnership idea might not work. He referenced at least once, for example, some projects in Indiana that he believed did not work out the way the private sector had promised. In 2014, then-Gov. Mike Pence arranged a deal with Isolux Corsan, a Spanish construction firm, to extend a stretch of interstate in the southern part of Indiana. The firm had turned in the lowest bid but never completed a project in the United States before, and it fell behind schedule. The state of Indiana had to eventually dissolve the partnership and issued public debt to finish the project, though it still remains incomplete.

[...]

Trump and Cohn have had a rocky relationship after the economic adviser criticized the president’s comments about white-supremacist riots in Charlottesville, suggesting that there were “many fine people on both sides.” Several White House advisers have said recently that the former Goldman Sachs banker may exit. Asked about that Saturday, Trump pulled Cohn up to a news conference stage and asked if he was staying. The economic adviser said yes and that he was having fun.

“Gary, hopefully, will be staying for a long time,” Trump said. “Now, if he leaves, I’m going to say: ‘I’m very happy that he left.’ Okay? All right?”

His one self-aware moment in life.

There was little talk about repealing and replacing the Affordable Care Act or launching a campaign to curb entitlement spending — issues that are now unlikely to come up legislatively in 2018.

[...]

Trump has also decided that pursuing cuts to the country’s entitlement spending in 2018 is not a good bid for him, and he purposefully left it out of public comments, advisers said.

[...]

Trump told the leaders that they needed to focus on selling their 2017 accomplishments and continued to cast his administration in historic terms, even in private.

"Even in private" as if he actually knows better and is willing to admit it to anyone.

The president has the lowest poll numbers of a first-year president in decades, and leading Republicans fear privately that the midterm elections could be damaging.

One can only hope.