Trump has options if heat is too much

After storming out of a scheduled White House meeting about infrastructure with Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, President Trump declared all legislative work dead until Democrats drop their oversight activities.

“You can’t investigate and legislate simultaneously — it just doesn’t work that way,” he tweeted later.

Oh? Bill Clinton brokered several bipartisan bills with a Republican Congress despite years of investigation that concluded in impeachment. George W. Bush got some big things done despite an investigation into the outing of CIA operative Valerie Plame. Barack Obama navigated delicate budget and debt-ceiling negotiations during probes of ATF gun-running, IRS targeting and deaths in Benghazi.

Trump’s meltdown, which feels an awful lot like tantrums that derailed negotiations on immigration and guns, was supposedly sparked by Pelosi saying, after a closed-door meeting with House Democrats, that the president is “engaged in a cover-up.”

That singed his thin skin. Never mind that in 2013 Trump accused the Obama administration of a “MASSIVE COVERUP” on Benghazi. And had spent much of the previous year calling him a Kenya-born, illegitimate occupant of the office.

Coup de disgrace: Last week, after insisting “I don’t do coverups,” Trump added, “I’m the most transparent president probably in the history of this country.”

Let’s see. The Mueller report disclosed that he told former White House counsel Don McGahn to lie about his attempt to have the special counsel fired. He’s publicly declared he will ignore all House subpoenas. And his treasury secretary is blocking the release of tax returns to which an IRS internal memo says Congress is lawfully entitled.

The Oval Office, where the President works, is a kitchen. If Trump can’t stand the heat, he has options.

— New York Daily News