The dam of denial has broken By E.J. Dionne Jr.

The dam of denial has broken
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Trump defends his mental fitness, slams 'Fire and Fury' author

By E.J. Dionne Jr. Opinion writer January 7 at 7:07 PM

The most astonishing aspect of the response to Michael Wolff’s book is that anyone is surprised. President Trump’s unfitness for office was obvious long before he was elected. Once he moved into the White House, the destructive chaos of his administration was there for all to see. Future historians will scratch their heads to figure out why it took this particular book to break the dam of denial.

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But Wolff alone cannot bring this presidency crashing down, given how many Republicans still seem determined to protect Trump. ....................................................................

To chart a path forward from here, it’s important to see why Trump has maintained enough support, or at least acquiescence, to keep himself in office.

The first key is his phony populism, with an emphasis on both words.

Trump will continue to try to rally what base he has left with tweets about kneeling NFL players, immigrants, law and order and “political correctness.” He will keep attacking Hillary Clinton, the surest sign of his weakness, since his own record has done little to draw Americans his way. He needs targets to make his enemy-of-my-enemy-is-my-friend approach work.

But it’s not working as well as it used to. Trump’s policies have shown that his true commitments are to himself and to other very wealthy people and corporate interests. The broad unpopularity of his tax cut is a sign that his flimflam has not deceived voters as to where his heart and his bank account lie.

His other policies, reflected in his slew of executive actions, have weakened federal protections for the environment, for workplace safety and worker pay, for civil rights and for small investors.

Last week alone, in the midst of the swirl around Wolff’s book, the administration moved to open nearly all of our offshore waters to drilling even as the Department of Housing and Urban Development suspended an Obama-era rule requiring communities to address residential segregation. And the Justice Department, undercutting conservative states’-rights rhetoric, renewed enforcement of federal marijuana laws despite state legalization statutes....................