Six months in, Trump lurches from one disaster to another with no end to the lies

Jimmy Margulies, onetime editorial cartoonist at The Record of Woodland Park, and others are having a field day with President Trump's failure to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act and, in the process, screw tens of millions who got health insurance under the law.

This gem is from cartoonist Rick McKee at The Augusta Chronicle in Georgia.

-- HACKENSACK, N.J.

By VICTOR E. SASSON

EDITOR

The collapse of Republican efforts to overhaul health care puts President Trump's entire legislative agenda at risk, USA Today reports:

"Trump and aides have repeatedly said that their hopes for tax reform hinged on a new health care law, because it included changes to the tax code.

"Plans for an infrastructure bill, a budget plan and raising the debt ceiling may also be in doubt because of bruised feeling left over from the health care fight," USA Today reporter David Jackson says in The Record of Woodland Park (9A).

According to New York Times Op-Ed Columnist David Leonhardt, the No. 1 lesson to take from the collapse of the Republican health care bills is this:

"They have demonstrated that facts still matter and that the truth has some inherent advantage over falsehood," Leonhardt says.

The Times columnist reminds us "Trump, after all, won the presidency despite a constant stream of falsehoods" [and those tweeted and spoken lies continue unabated].

"He launched his political career with a lie about Barack Obama's birthplace and just kept on lying about almost every imaginable subject. He also admitted to being a sexual molester. He refused to release his tax returns.... And yet he was elected president.

"There was, and still is, ample reason for despondence."

Now, Trump claims President Obama's Affordable Care Act is collapsing, "when in fact it has mostly worked well -- and its flaws, while real, are eminently fixable through bipartisan legislation," Leonhardt reports.

A Record editorial today says "now's the time to work with Democrats" (10A).

Of course, the paper's Editorial Board could have and should have run that editorial every week since 2010, when Republicans won a majority in the House and the Tea Party ignited racial warfare against Obama.

Putin bromance

The latest legislative disaster comes not long after Trump jumped back into bed with Russian dictator Vladimir Putin at the G-20 summit.

Then, before The Times published them, Donald Trump Jr. released emails about his excitement over meeting during the 2016 presidential campaign with a Russian lawyer who promised to deliver "dirt" on Democratic Hillary Clinton.

And, remember, Trump took office on Jan. 20, just six months ago, and has already earned the title of worst U.S. president ever.

Local news?

On The Record's Local front today, two photos show the Englewood Night Market, but there is no mention the event was sponsored by a unit of Gannett Co.'s North Jersey Media Group, which publishes the paper.

Today's Better Living cover on dining near Grand Central Terminal -- from USA Today -- is aimed at people who live in New York State and Connecticut, and ride Metro-North Railroad.

Very little of the food shown on the cover, 2BL and 3BL is suitable for people who don't eat meat.

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