Welcome to the final Washington Secrets of the week. That means our rival strategists rank how Donald Trump has fared during the past seven days. Secrets will be taking a break over Memorial Day and will return at the end of next week.It was a week that passed for business as usual for Donald Trump. Iran brinksmanship (or an ex post facto unfollowed-through threat, depending on how you look at it), a trip to the roof, big wins in the ongoing campaign against his own party, followed by awkward reversals.On Monday, the president announced he was calling off plans for a strike on Iran. The previously unannounced threat had been abandoned, he said, at the request of Gulf leaders who wanted more time for talks. It was a headscratcher even by the odd standards of this presidency, publicly calling off something that hadn’t yet been announced.
A day later, he surprised members of the White House press corps by inviting them up onto the roof to survey the latest work on his new ballroom. After taking questions on everything from Cuba and Iran to domestic prices, he laid out breakfast sandwiches for the reporters.
The evening brought a reckoning for Republican congressmen who had crossed Trump for one reason or another. Rep. Thomas Massie (who led the fight to release the Epstein files and has long been a libertarian thorn in the president’s side) lost his primary in Kentucky. Sen. Bill Cassidy (who voted to convict Trump in his second impeachment trial) went down in Louisiana.
