The "crony bridgegate" scandal President Donald Trump cooked up this week earned the president a searing rebuke from the conservative Wall Street Journal editorial board.
Earlier this week, Trump threatened to shut down the opening of the Gordie Howe International Bridge, which will connect Detroit, Michigan, and Windsor, Ontario, after it opens later this year. Trump accused Canada of giving the U.S. a bad deal, and demanded that the two countries negotiate a deal where the U.S. becomes a partial owner of the Canadian-financed and built project.
Not only were the president's comments an example of "shoddy treatment of an ally," the Journal's editorial board argued in a new editorial on Wednesday that they are "bad politics, too."
"The intervention is another illustration of the Administration’s governance by cronyism," the editors wrote. "All sorts of people are trying to reach Mr. Trump with special pleading, maybe even to present him with some gold-plated award that they invented yesterday. The bet is that, in return for their investment, they might soon have a pardon, or a tariff exemption, or even the President mucking up U.S. national interests to advance their agenda."
The editors surmised that the fallout from Trump's tirade could be a "political gift" to Democrats.
"If Democrats retake the House this fall, the Trump Administration will spend its final two years working in the shade, because it’ll be hard to see the sun through flying subpoenas," they wrote.