Finding his limits

President Trump was forced to abandon his decision to host next year’s Group of Seven summit at his private golf club after it became clear the move had alienated Republicans and swiftly become part of the impeachment inquiry that threatens his presidency.

  WaPo

You might ask what the fuck thought would hpapen. But he may simply be testing the waters to find out where his actual limits are. Heaven knows he doesn't pay any price for the testing. On the other hand, he doesn't seem to often even consider what might happen. He just does what he wants and then makes up some shit about why it was a good idea even when he (rarely) gets blocked.

In a round of phone calls with conservative allies this weekend, Trump was told Republicans are struggling to defend him on so many fronts, according to an administration official who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal matters.

[...]

“It’s not lost on me that if we made the decision [to move the G-7] on Thursday, we wouldn’t have had the news conference on Thursday regarding everything else, but that’s fine,” [acting Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney] said on “Fox News Sunday.”

Mulvaney’s acknowledgment of a mistake — he also said Sunday that the news conference had been less than “perfect” — comes as Trump has privately expressed displeasure with his acting chief’s job performance and as some White House officials are seeking to replace him, according to several people familiar with the matter who spoke on the condition of anonymity to reveal private discussions. Several officials said Trump’s aides and allies are considering options for a new chief of staff.

On Friday, White House press officials said Trump continued to support Mulvaney. “Mick Mulvaney’s standing in the White House has not changed,” White House spokeswoman Stephanie Grisham said.

No feeling sorry for her when Mulvaney is tweet-canned. She knows how this goes.

And then Mulvaney goes right back into the fire on Fox News...

[...] by saying the president “still considers himself to be in the hospitality business.”

While several Trump allies said the comment was accurate, they said it was a bad idea for Mulvaney to make it in public.

Oooh, you think?

Other top Republicans, including Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, have begun to distance themselves from Mulvaney [...] .

That's never a good sign.

Trump blamed his G-7 reversal on critics, saying on Twitter that his decision to scrap plans for a summit at the Doral club was “based on both Media & Democrat Crazed and Irrational Hostility.”

But behind closed doors, several aides and allies said, Trump changed his mind in response to pressure and frustration from his own party.

In the month since Democrats announced their impeachment inquiry, Republicans have struggled to offer a coherent response.

[...]

At the same time, they’re being asked to defend the president’s erratic approach to policymaking, including his abrupt decision to withdraw U.S. troops and abandon Kurdish fighters in northeastern Syria. That announcement was roundly condemned by Republicans, including some of his staunchest defenders. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (Ky.), in a rare public rebuke of Trump, wrote a withering op-ed in The Washington Post on Friday, just days after 129 House Republicans backed a resolution criticizing the president’s move.

[...]

Privately, and occasionally in public, several Republicans said they were not prepared to defend the president from charges that he was engaged in self-dealing on the G-7 site selection.

[...]

Trump has been closely watching Republicans and their comments about impeachment, according to one administration official. The president was told repeatedly his G-7 decision made it more difficult to keep Senate Republicans in a unified front against impeachment proceedings, the official said. Before he changed course, Trump had waved off concerns from advisers who said hosting world leaders at his club would not play well.

“There was very little support for this in the building even before Mick went out there and did what he did,” an official said.

[...]

Before he took office, Trump made the unprecedented decision to keep ownership of his businesses — but he promised that he would never use his new power to help them. The Trump Organization’s lawyers promised to avoid even the appearance of “any advantage derived from the Office of the Presidency.”

And where are they? Not having any effect on his actions, that's for sure.

But in practice, Trump has continued to boost his businesses — by talking them up and by visiting them repeatedly, with aides and fellow Republicans in tow.

That was the main benefit of his candidacy for the office.

“This is why he ran in the first place,” said Tim O’Brien, a Trump biographer and critic. “ [...] It was free marketing.”

[...]

Trump has visited his properties more than 130 times while in office. As of this summer, those visits had brought him more than $1.6 million in payments from the federal government and Republican campaign groups, which rented Trump’s ballrooms for fundraisers.

In the past 18 months, Trump has made even more expensive visits to his properties in Ireland, Scotland and South Florida — visits that took him far out of his way from the official business of his trips. He also suggested Vice President Pence do the same: Pence built his own detour into an official trip and spent extra hours commuting so he could stay at Trump’s club in remote southwestern Ireland. These trips bring attention to Trump’s properties, and they bring revenue.

[...]

One former senior administration official said Trump would regularly brag about his properties and ask visitors their opinions while boasting of their amenities.

“It’s true that he really just thinks his properties are the best,” said a longtime adviser to the president. “He does not understand in his mind why he would have something at someone else’s property.”

It probably chaps his ass. That's why he suggested Camp David (which he apparently told someone would be no good earlier, perhaps because that's where Obama held it in 2012). If he can't get the contract, he'll be damned if any competitor will.

This is what Mulvaney had to say about Camp David:

But on Thursday, Mulvaney had discounted Camp David, the government-owned presidential retreat, as the site for the summit, claiming, “I understand the folks who participated in it hated it and thought it was a miserable place to have the G-7.” He added that it was too small and remote for the international summit.

  Hawaii News Now

So Trump's mention of Camp David now may simply have been a way to poke his finger in Mulvaney's eye. He has to poke somebody, because he got blocked.

Earlier, when Mulvaney announced the Doral decision, I wondered if they'd actually even checked into the other sites they claimed were being considered. This may answer:

Mulvaney listed more than a half dozen states visited in the screening, including Tennessee, North Carolina, Hawaii and Utah. But convention, economic development and tourism officials in several of those states said they were unaware of any visits, and some didn’t even know their state was in the running.

Governor David Ige’s office confirmed, a “general search” had been done in Hawaii, but didn’t think any specific site had been considered.

In Utah, where Mulvaney said two places had made a final list of four sites, the governor’s office said it was not aware any venue there was under serious consideration.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

UPDATE 11/16:  How the Doral resort decision came about.