As I have said previously, Donald Trump sees failure as synonymous with being a “loser.” If you listen to him carefully, he never admits to failing. Even businesses that are defunct he counts as a “successful” for one reason or another. His bankruptcies are not failures. He considers them a success because he effectively uses bankruptcy laws for his benefit (the people who get stiffed on the other hand, are not his concern). It will be much of the same for his presidency.

Thus far, Trump has not “failed.” Nearly all of his cabinet choices are confirmed, and any that dropped out did so before any votes or hearings. The Obamacare replacement fiasco is on the road to failure. Trump, as I have written, will not take the blame if it happens. He is not going to be the “loser.” While he said he’d blame Democrats, the reality is, the GOP controls Congress.

At Breitbart, there is an article with audio of Paul Ryan saying he wouldn’t “defend” Donald Trump anymore. The news of this story broke last October, so it is nothing new outside of the audio itself. However, there are portions of the piece that appear to reveal the possibility of Trump dumping all of the blame on Speaker Paul Ryan.

Some of it requires additional thoughts:

Now, Ryan—still the Speaker—has pushed now President Donald Trump to believe his healthcare legislation the American Health Care Act would repeal and replace Obamacare when it does not repeal Obamacare.

Wait a moment. I thought Donald Trump was one of the most brilliant men on earth and Paul Ryan told us the President helped write the legislation. Boyle seems to be saying Trump was “duped” by Ryan into believing they were fully repealing Obamacare and then replacing it. That is absurd. The first page of the bill says they are amending Obamacare, not repealing it.

The article goes on:

This is the first major initiative that Trump has worked on with Ryan—and the fact it is going so poorly calls into question whether Speaker Ryan, the GOP’s failed 2012 vice presidential nominee who barely supported Trump at all in 2016, really understands how Trump won and how to win in general.

So Trump is working on it with Ryan, but that it’s going poorly only reflects on Ryan? Trump won in part because he promised he was going have insurance coverage “for all” and promised not to touch Social Security, Medicare or Medicaid.

After a slew of paragraphs whining about Ryan not supporting Trump during the election, we get to the meat of the piece:

“The President gave Ryan a chance,” one source close to the President said. “If he doesn’t get his act together soon, the President will have no choice but to step in and fix this on his own. He’s the best negotiator on the planet, and if this were his bill not Ryan’s it would not be this much of a mess.”

Yeah, right. Have you ever heard Donald  Trump talk about health care policy – or any policy for that matter – in such a way that he can take a bill and articulate the legal and bureaucratic entanglements?

Trump will do doubt jump ship if this goes bad and he’ll leave Paul Ryan in his wake. Remember, to Trump, failure is a loser and he won’t allow himself to be the loser.