...

Mr. McConnell and “several other” Republican senators expressed their irritation about the anti-Heller campaign during the White House meeting, according to two people, one of them a senator, who were present.

America First pulled the ads later that same day, ostensibly because Heller agreed to attend a strategy meeting at the White House along with the rest of the Republican senators, and definitely not because Mitch McConnell and other grown-up politicians told Donald Trump that his people were fucking everything up in spectacular fashion.

According to the senator, the president laughed good-naturedly at the complaint and signaled that he had received the message.

It doesn't really come as a surprise that the president, a man who has spent his entire life trying to convince people that being born into money and attaching his name to a line of overpriced hotels somehow makes him a successful businessman, isn't particularly skilled at the finer points of intra-party negotiation. The more delicious aspect of this story, though, is the image of Mitch McConnell, widely regarded as a master strategist and legislative genius, watching all of his best-laid plans crushed into a fine powder by the lumbering oaf that is Donald Trump. McConnell made this bed, of course, but he probably didn't realize that it was going to become this uncomfortable this quickly.

Neither Mr. McConnell’s office nor his top outside political advisers were warned about an impending attack on one of their most endangered incumbents. “They didn’t check in with anybody,” said Josh Holmes, Mr. McConnell’s former chief of staff. “There was no clearing of channels, no heads-up, nothing.”

Differences of opinion regarding the procedural aspects of passing Trumpcare, though, might be the least of McConnell's worries, since the longer this process drags on, the more apparent it becomes that Donald Trump hasn't the foggiest idea of what is actually in the bill that he so desperately wants credit for passing.

A senator who supports the bill left the meeting at the White House with a sense that the president did not have a grasp of some basic elements of the Senate plan—and seemed especially confused when a moderate Republican complained that opponents of the bill would cast it as a massive tax break for the wealthy, according to an aide who received a detailed readout of the exchange.

Mr. Trump said he planned to tackle tax reform later, ignoring the repeal’s tax implications, the staff member added.

Since nothing that appears in the failing New York Times ever escapes his eye, the president fired back early this morning.

To recap: Mitch McConnell couldn't pass Trumpcare on time. One of the few people who might be persuaded to reconsider immediately got roasted by a president whose negotiating skill set begins and ends with "uncritical retribution." And now Donald Trump and Mitch McConnell are publicly sniping at each other as the Senate heads into an eleven-day break with the fate of its signature piece of legislation—the contents of which Trump may or may not understand—hanging in the balance. Happy Fourth of July, Mitch!

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