Hi, I'm Isaac DeVair. Welcome to Off Message.

Rahm Emanuel thinks everyone in Washington is too focused on the crazy around President Donald Trump to see what's actually going on and what's not.

So, I asked him, can we look past the crazy?

I would use plural, Emmanuel said, not just singular.

Just take what's been in the headlines last few weeks,

amid all the West Wing

drama and turmoil,

all the Jim Comey stuff.

I proposed upheaval

to the tax code

unveiled without any detail

about who would pay less,

who would pay more,

and how.

Emmanuel called that

totally unacceptable.

Or the mounting tension

with North Korea,

as Trump talks about canceling the trade deal and air defense system over South Korea, or Trump's blithe invitations to the Oval Office

for anti-democratic leaders like Rodrigo Duterte of the Philippines and Erdogan of Turkey.

America's word and America's reliability is now in question, Emmanuel said.

Come and gone?

...