'No Health Care Plan, No Vacation'
If the Republican Party civil war over healthcare was not enough of a spectacle for political junkies to feast on, Donald Trump's cabinet may have gone one better.
Oh, to be a fly on the wall at the President's next cabinet meeting. Last time like loyal foot soldiers they gushed about Trump for the TV cameras. Next time it could a bit more testing.
The President has, breathtakingly, publicly declared he should not have hired Jeff Sessions as Attorney General. If Trump had known Sessions would rat on the President by recusing himself from the Russia investigation, Trump says he would have overlooked the former senator from Alabama.
There's a vote of confidence in the country's top law enforcement official, who has been one of Trump's most loyal backers.
Kinda makes Malcolm Turnbull's ructions with backbencher Tony Abbott seem pretty civil, really.
Speaking of Russia
To make matters worse, the US Treasury fined ExxonMobil $US2 million on Thursday for violating US sanctions against Russia for signing eight agreements in 2014 with the Kremlin connected energy giant Rosneft.
The CEO of Exxon at the time? None other than current Secretary of State, Rex Tillerson.
An interesting sidenote is that man who helped seal that deal was Australian Glenn Waller, the president of Exxon's Russia business. But I digress.
Before the weekend, Exxon duly responded by announcing it was not only suing the US Treasury for the "unlawful" and "unfair" fine, but also named Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin as the case's top defendant.
Now the US has always had a litigious culture, but the spectre of the Treasury Secretary defending himself in court for enforcing sanctions for actions overseen by the now-Secretary of State Tillerson must be one for the ages.
Tillerson, incidentally, was the only US official to attend President Trump's two-hour bilateral meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Germany this month.
Yes, Tillerson and Mnuchin were both highly successful business executives at Exxon and Goldman Sachs. And nobody can accuse Trump of inappropriately interfering to let Tillerson's Exxon off the hook or turn a blind eye to Russia on this situation.
Getting ugly
But in the current climate of divisions within the Republican Party and Trump administration over a range of policies, it's not exactly the optics a president would wish for in trying to present a cohesive governing team.
Trump's chief strategist, Steven Bannon, reportedly once called House Republican Speaker Paul Ryan "a limp-dick motherf*****r", according to a new book released this week, Devil's Bargain.
Ryan, incidentally, is the conservative policy wonk meant to be ushering through tax reform in Congress – in conjunction with Mnuchin. Tax reformists better hope Mnuchin is not too distracted by the lawsuit from Tillerson's old firm.
For the centre of world politics, Washington can be a small town at times.
Trump this week invited Republican Senators – minus the unfortunately ill John McCain – to the White House for a 13th hour bid to rescue the already-collapsed Republican bill to repeal and replace Obamacare.
An 11th hour meeting a few days earlier before Republicans had walked away from the contentious healthcare bill might have been more tactical.
Threatening
Nonetheless, Trump took the opportunity to strategically sit next to one of the holdouts, Nevada senator Dean Heller, and mock him on national television. Trump, in effect, threatened to undermine his future as a US Senator in Republican primary elections if Heller didn't toe the line.
"Look, he wants to remain a senator, doesn't he?" Trump mused.
He continued: "Any senator who votes against starting debate is really telling America that you're fine with Obamacare." It was vintage Trump. The showman, the joker, the negotiator.
And fair enough too after Republicans had promised for seven years to repeal Obamacare, but baulked when they had the legislative majority. Even if Trump recently described as "mean" a similar House bill that would have stripped health insurance from about 22 million Americans.
But the broader point is this is not a cohesive or unified Republican team.
Trump promised one of the greatest cabinets in history with "by far the highest IQ of any Cabinet ever". That is, except in hindsight, former national security adviser Michael Flynn, who was sacked in his first month.
It is certainly a cabinet of talented individuals, with decorated military generals, billionaires and business executives.
But collectively with Trump at the helm of the conservatives in cabinet and Congress, it's not exactly a united team.
