The return of the chaos president

Republicans can't stop him. They can't even hope to contain him.

President Trump.
(Image credit: Illustrated | Ron Sachs-Pool/Getty Images, Wikimedia Commons)

If you were an all-powerful Democratic strategist out to subvert the Republican Party from the inside, you would be hard pressed to devise a more effective plan than the remarkable scene that unfolded on Wednesday afternoon in a televised meeting at the White House between the president and congressional leaders.

In the two weeks since the deadly school shooting in Parkland, Florida, public opinion has shifted sharply in favor of gun control, with a series of corporations breaking longstanding ties with the NRA and retailers making it more difficult to buy certain guns. That puts Republicans in a precarious position, forced by the staunchly pro-gun grassroots of the party to oppose the new regulations for which the broader electorate is clamoring.

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Damon Linker

Damon Linker is a senior correspondent at TheWeek.com. He is also a former contributing editor at The New Republic and the author of The Theocons and The Religious Test.