President Trump devoted three speeches to the nation’s ailing roads and bridges — and made misleading attacks on his predecessor’s efforts to fix them during a week his administration had wanted to focus on infrastructure but was derailed by the public testimony of James B. Comey, the former F.B.I. director.
Mr. Trump announced plans to turn over the Federal Aviation Administration’s air traffic control responsibilities to a private nonprofit organization on Monday, a broad push for a $1 trillion infrastructure investment on Wednesday, and the creation of a council to cut red tape on Friday. Here is an assessment.
Mr. Trump’s Latest Straw Man
Lacking a real plan to fix the country’s roads, bridges and water systems, President Trump on Friday trained his guns on the phantom menace of cumbersome regulations that he said were delaying much-needed public works projects.
“We will lift these restrictions and unleash the full potential of the United States of America,” he thundered in a speech at the Department of Transportation to local government officials, representatives of the building trades and others. It was classic Trumpian bluster, with giant dollops of misinformation and misdirection. He repeated worn-out right-wing complaints about an overweening federal government that had built a “thicket of rules, regulations and red tape” and “blocked many important projects.” And he once again ignored what most experts consider to be the biggest problem with American infrastructure: years of underinvestment by the federal and state governments.
