The 5-Minute Fix: Trump is on an island with his economic policies

Democracy Dies in Darkness

Keeping up with politics is easy now

By Amber Phillips Republican lawmakers, the stock market and farmers want President Trump to back off the trade battle he started with China this, which is increasingly looking like an all-out trade war. Also, with a couple of tweets this week, the president of the United States sent the stock of one of the country's largest companies tumbling. This — I feel like I say it every week — is not normal. Trump's unconventional and controversial approach to economic policy is increasingly leaving him alone on an island, isolating him more than his other controversial impulses. Let's review how. He's going after Amazon There's a reason presidents refrain from singling out individual companies for criticism. When you're president, words have an outsized influence. Amazon's stock dropped 5 percent on Monday as the president attacked the company, its owner Jeff Bezos, and another major company Bezos owns — us. He repeated the attacks at least three times this week. How this is isolating the president: Beyond the above, Trump is also being called out for attacking the freedom of the press. The White House acknowledges that Trump's tweets about Amazon come after stories in The Washington Post that particularly bug him, reports The Post's Marc Fischer. His critics call this a war on the media and say we shouldn't take this behavior lightly. Sen. Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.) has compared Trump's treatment of journalists to Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin's. Watch Flake's full speech comparing Trump to Stalin He's ramping up a trade war with China.  Trump threatens new $100 billion round of China tariffs First, he issued tariffs on aluminum and steel. Then, he announced his intent to slap tariffs on $50 billion worth of Chinese-made products. When China bit back when its own promise of tariffs on U.S. soybeans, cars and airplanes, Trump said he'd throw tariffs on an additional $100 billion worth of goods. China has now vowed to fight “to the end.” How this is isolating the president: The stock market is dropping (Trump used to brag about the stock market doing well), soybean farmers in Trump states are urging Trump to back off, and Republican lawmakers are openly criticizing Trump to a degree many of them haven't before. "[I]f he’s even half-serious,” Sen. Ben Sasse (R-Neb.) said in a statement Thursday night, “this is nuts.” Plus, some of his own aides vociferously oppose these tariffs. Top economic adviser Gary Cohn resigned in part over Trump deciding to impose these tariffs, and his new adviser, Larry Kudlow, is trying to promise the world this is all talk that will get solved at the negotiating table. Trump doesn't seem to get the message.

Trump & The Porn Star update

Stormy Daniels on "60 Minutes.” (CBS News/60 Minutes via AP)

Remember how Trump has been so uncharacteristically quiet about Stormy Daniels, who's alleging she had an affair with him more than a decade ago and he paid her off during the campaign to keep quiet? Well Trump spoke about it publicly for the first time on Thursday. “No,” he said, when asked by reporters if he knew his lawyer, Michael Cohen, paid Daniels $130,000 in October 2016 to stay quiet. “I don't know,” he said when asked whether he knew where the money came from. (Cohen has said it came from his own money.) Silence, when asked whether Trump created a fund that Cohen could draw on. Which means we still don't know if Trump was involved in this. The Fix's Callum Borchers carefully parses what we know: “Cohen said he was not reimbursed by the Trump campaign or the Trump Organization but did not say anything about Trump, the person.” Trump didn't rule that possibility out.

What a modern-day protester looks like

A portrait of America's protesters

They are more likely to be Democrats, college graduates and to disapprove of Trump. They're also much more likely to vote in November's midterm elections than the general population.

They are a new generation of tens of millions of activists in the Trump era, one captured in detail in a new Washington Post-Kaiser Family Foundation poll.

Here's a portrait of a modern-day protester:

White House: Trump has been tough on Russia because he said so

Press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders says it is “ridiculous” to suggest otherwise.

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Analysis A fired conservative writer’s crime: Taking ‘abortion is murder’ to a logical conclusion Whatever you think of Kevin Williamson's firing from the Atlantic, his comments were a logical extension of what about half of Americans believe. By Aaron Blake  •  Read more »

Analysis LGBT advocates are on the verge of a major milestone So far, not a single bill they oppose on the state level has become law, compared to more than a dozen last year. By Amber Phillips  •  Read more »

Analysis Fox News’s power over Trump, in one official’s words: ‘He will listen more when it is on TV’ It's a remarkable statement, yet it is totally consistent with observable trends By Callum Borchers  •  Read more »

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Analysis While Congress stalls, states are actually doing something about sexual harassment There has been an unprecedented number of sexual harassment policy changes at the state level this year. By Amber Phillips  •  Read more »