President Donald Trump is running the government like he ran his businesses — and it’s going about as badly as you’d expect.
On the August 23 episode of The Weeds, Matthew Yglesias and Sarah Kliff discuss the Trump administration’s decision to end the DACA program and Trump’s overall style of leadership, potential Obamacare sabotage and stabilization schemes, and a new white paper on the collapse of all-payer rate setting health care systems in the US.
The Trump administration’s approach to terminating DACA — essentially being noncommittal following its own the announcement to end the program in six months — is very similar, says Sarah, to their approach to other policy issues. They create a large amount of uncertainty by not officially ending or replacing older policies, instead leaving them in a grey-zone or “policy limbo.”
“You don’t usually create a policy that creates a bad situation and then say, ‘Okay, that will be the catalyst for creating a better situation,’ but a lot of the things of the Trump era are unprecedented,” Sarah says.
On health care, Matt says that while Congress is making a valid attempt to stabilize ACA markets, the White House is making an effort to undermine the program by decreasing Obamacare outreach.
