Hello and welcome to The Spectator's Americano podcast, a series of discussions about

American politics and the Trump presidency in 2017. I'm Freddie Gray and I'm deputy editor

of The Spectator. I'm joined today by Jacob Halberin, who is editor of the national interest,

and we're talking about whether Donald

Trump is totally paralysed at home and abroad. Jacob, Donald Trump, or T, as he now refers to himself

on Twitter, suffered quite a dramatic setback yesterday on his health care bill. And it's led a lot of

commentators in America to ask, is he actually

capable of passing any major legislation or is his presidency completely hamstrung? What do you

think? The two are actually different questions. First, is he capable of passing major legislation?

The answer is he's got to compile a perfect batting average

of zero. He's gotten in comparison to previous modern presidents, his record is nugatory. And what it displays

is that when you have a president who is unfamiliar, if not oblivious,

to what is in the actual legislation, he is unable to persuade or threaten senators from his

own party to support any legislation.

That's been a key component in the past,

whether there's Lyndon Johnson, Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan, even Barack Obama. You have to be

able to persuade legislators to support your legislation. You have to be able to go out in public,

deliver speeches, town hall meetings, hold press conferences, where you can at least

display some familiarity with the legislation. Trump has none of that. He, this bill could have

contained the very opposite proposals, and he still would have endorsed it. He wanted the spectacle, the theater

of signing major legislation, not the substance of it. Now, is he hamstrung? No, he still has a lot

of authority obviously in foreign affairs. He can roll back regulations.

...