Editorial: Trump has achieved nothing in six months

For all its importance, the Russian scandal is probably hurting Trump's presidency less than his domestic failures. Photo / 123RF

Editorial

US president Donald Trump has now been in power for six months but he looks likely to end his first year in office without a single significant achievement.

Defections from his own party this week shot down his attempt to repeal Obamacare, a centrepiece of Republican strategy.

Promises of sweeping tax reforms are at least a year away and look dubious, based on his inability to win agreement on healthcare.

The president's trillion dollar infrastructure package remains merely a slogan, Congress has refused to give him money to build a border wall with Mexico and the Supreme Court has just exempted grandparents from his controversial travel ban on mainly Muslim countries - the latest step in an unseemly power struggle between the president and the judiciary over the ban's legality.

International observers of Trump are inclined to pay more attention to his frequent missteps on the world stage, which range from merely embarrassing (sexist and ageist comments about Brigitte Macron, wife of the French president) to very serious (claims that the Trump campaign colluded with Russia to win the election).

The Russia story has taken on a life of its own ever since Trump sacked former FBI director James Comey, who was investigating him over the allegations, and the Justice Department appointed Robert Mueller to do the job instead.

Revelations continued this week with claims that Trump and Russian president Vladimir Putin talked privately for about an hour at a G20 dinner with no US officials present.

Next week the Senate judiciary committee will grill Trump's son-in-law Jared Kushner, former campaign manager Paul Manafort and son Donald Trump Jr, who met a Russian lawyer claiming to have dirt on Hillary Clinton during the campaign.

For all its importance, the Russian scandal is probably hurting Trump's presidency less than his domestic failures.

Egged on by partisan media outlets such as Fox News and the president's own Twitter feed, most Trump supporters see the story as the Washington political establishment and liberal media ganging up on their hero.

His real problem is it that he has no "alternative facts" to keep his base happy. He was elected on a platform of immigration, tax cuts, healthcare, jobs and living standards and has so far failed to deliver on any of them. Blaming the Democrats or even his own party will not work forever.

The Republicans may hold the answer to the quagmire that US politics has become. Trump has shown he cannot change and the Democrats are powerless.

Republican politicians, many of whom only reluctantly supported Trump in the first place, will be doing the numbers on whether to stick with him.

Trump looks very unpopular - his approval ratings fell to 36 per cent in a recent Washington Post/ABC News poll, the worst among presidents at this point in their tenures in 70 years.

But his support is still much higher among Republican voters and so far Trump has proved far better at reading the party's base than his colleagues.

They will also remember that Trump defied bad polls and multiple scandals to win the presidency, against his own team's expectations.

Until Trump's lack of progress starts to erode his core base, his colleagues are likely to sit on their hands and the shambles in Washington will continue.