Wednesday, April 04, 2018

Trump’s top infrastructure adviser quit

Infrastructure week is finally over.


By Matthew Yglesias@mattyglesiasmatt@vox.com  Apr 4, 2018, 2:40pm EDT

As far as Trump administration chaos goes, the departure of infrastructure adviser D.J. Gribbin — “to pursue new opportunities,” according to the White House official who briefed transportation reporters on it Tuesday — is not that big of a deal. But the fact that the top White House aide focused on infrastructure is leaving in the midst of what’s allegedly a White House push for its infrastructure plan is a good tell that there is, in fact, no real push for an infrastructure plan.

President Donald Trump gave a speech about it last week in Ohio that rapidly generated into off-topic rambling, and the plan itself does nothing to fix the country’s most urgent infrastructure problems.

But a promise to deliver some kind of $1 trillion infrastructure boost was a signature element of Trump’s 2016 campaign platform, and combined with his (broken) promise to avoid Medicaid cuts and deliver affordable health insurance coverage to all, helped explain why Trump was perceived by voters as the most ideologically moderate GOP nominee in a generation or two.

With Gribbin out, we can close the door on the never-ending “infrastructure week” and say definitively that nothing is happening here.

Read more
https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2018/4/4/17199034/dj-gribbin-infrastructure

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