Francis Wilkinson, Columnist

Trump Knocks the Air Out of Republicans

The political vacuum is one of the more curious features of the administration.

April 10, 2017 at 1:30 PM UTC

Francis Wilkinson is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist covering US politics and policy. Previously, he was executive editor for the Week and a writer for Rolling Stone.

Neutralized.
Photographer: Zach Gibson/Getty Images

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The vacuum created by an uninformed president with a policy agenda that maxed out at 140 characters "was supposed to be a feature, not a bug," said Republican consultant Liam Donovan, via email. Donald Trump would get to tweet, and House Speaker Paul Ryan would get to determine the contours of the American future.

After 11 weeks, vacuums are breeding vacuums. The House of Representatives is riven by factions and paralyzed by Republicans' inability to deliver on the fantastical promises made by Trump in the presidential campaign, and by Ryan and his colleagues over the course of Barack Obama's presidency.