As President Trump nears his first anniversary in office, he faces an unforgiving political landscape. Every word he says and every action he takes will either help him keep a Republican Congress or hand control to Democrats.

And if Dems get the gavel, impeachment could be the result.

This is the binary world Trump inhabits, and seen through that lens, the uproar over the president’s disparaging remarks about Haiti and other poor countries helps Dems in their goal of hobbling if not ending his presidency.

Despite his denial that he used the words “shithole countries,” most of the media instantly branded him a racist. After a few days of saturation coverage, polls will show a disapproving public and the ritual beatdown will be complete.

Then we’ll be on to the next ­crisis because this is life with Trump in the White House. He and we are always on the razor’s edge because that’s who he is.

That’s been the pattern for a year, and the president has managed to keep his head above water. But past performance is not a guarantee of future results — ­especially in an election year when passions against him are already overheating.

Consider that a potty-mouth president is hardly a new phenomenon. John F. Kennedy, Lyndon B. Johnson and Richard Nixon said far worse things, not to mention the words Bill Clinton must have used during his Oval Office trysts. But Trump is in a unique position.

Not because of what he says or does, but because of the reaction to it. With over half the country needing no more reason than his election to demand his removal, and with many Democrats promising impeachment if they gain power, every mistake is potentially fatal.

Each one gives the anti-Trump media license to go from zero to DEFCON 1, signifying an extreme national emergency.

Yet while a biased media hyperventilating is no virtue, Trump’s great flaw is that he keeps giving them ammunition. One minute he’s riding high, the next he’s running for his life.

The “shithole” storm is a perfect case in point.

Still basking in the afterglow of getting tax reform passed, Trump confidently convened a bipartisan group of Congress members for a televised meeting Wednesday on the “Dreamers” and related ­immigration issues.

The president presided in such CEO fashion that even CNN — yes, CNN — declared the meeting remarkable and Trump’s leadership commendable.

The next day, the president boasted about the compliments — and then acted as if he were ­beloved from sea to shining sea. At a follow-up meeting, he unleashed the furies with his derogatory ­remarks.

Did he forget that Democrats are out for his blood? Didn’t he learn anything from the torrent of White House leaks that bedeviled his early months?

For my money, “shithole countries” is not by itself a racist remark. It’s certainly crude and shouldn’t be said by a president, but those countries are a total mess. Central America is the murder capital of the world, and Haitians have been fleeing their country for years because they’ve given up hope it can be fixed.

And the context matters: Trump and Congress were bargaining over the fact that Haitians, Salvadorans and people from African countries who were admitted years, and in some cases decades, ago after emergencies were allowed to stay indefinitely.

You don’t have to be a racist to conclude that isn’t sound immigration policy, and that America should pick the immigrants who can contribute to its prosperity and security. Indeed, there is a growing bipartisan consensus on that point, which is why chain ­migration and the visa lottery were on the table.

That was then. Now Trump has made it more difficult, and maybe impossible, to move the needle in that direction. Getting funding for the wall will be doubly difficult.

Even a “Dreamers” deal may be a bridge too far, with the open-borders movement gleefully using the uproar to demand even more “love” than the president was prepared to offer. That will force moderate Dems to play hardball and Republicans will fold, as is their wont when Trump embarrasses them.

This, then, is shaping up as ­another moment where style beats substance, and identity politics ­determines policy.

As I have said, Trump has an impressive list of achievements, and his presidency marks an important course correction for America. The expanding economy, as reflected in job and wage growth and stock market exuberance, remains Exhibit A on his promises-kept list.

But the job isn’t done. To have a successful presidency, Trump needs to finish what he started and that means keeping a Republican Congress for four years. For that to happen, he must start behaving as if his future depends on every word he says every day.

Because it does.

And if he needs to blow off steam without blowing the lid off his presidency, he ought to remember the sage advice often attributed to President Harry ­Truman.

If you want a friend in Washington, get a dog.

DeB leaves them cold

The early days of Mayor Bill de Blasio’s second term are shocking without being surprising. “Let them eat cake” would be an improvement over the crumbs of progressive symbolism he is feeding downtrodden New Yorkers.

With thousands of tenants suffering through the bitter cold without heat, the mayor showed no compassion or passion. Perhaps that’s because they were his tenants — people living in the city’s Housing Authority.

If it were private landlords who had failed to provide basic services, de Blasio would have trotted out the usual tropes of greed and cruelty and brought the power of government down on their heads.

But when government is the problem, we get excuses followed by crickets.

That’s not to say the mayor was entirely missing in action during the icy weather. He filed a lawsuit against the five largest oil companies, aiming to make them responsible for damage to the city from climate change.

That won’t provide heat to shivering tenants or get the lead out of their apartments, but it does make the mayor look good to national progressives.

And really, isn’t that the whole point of his second term?

Long over ‘dues’

New York state workers could be in line for a huge tax cut, courtesy of the US Supreme Court.

A report from the Empire Center says that if SCOTUS overturns an Illinois law saying many public employees must pay union dues even if they don’t want to join a union, a similar law in New York could also crumble. In that case, government workers who opt out of dues could save more than $110 million.

Let it be so.



IRS waste is taxing

Your government at work.

The New York Times reported that the IRS paid private companies $20 million to collect $6.7 million from tax scofflaws.

The proposed solution from the agency is predictable: Give us more money.

“No” is the right response.