America is 'waking up to walking catastrophe' of Donald Trump, former Labor secretary says

'Trump's braggadocio has now been revealed as a total sham. He's incompetent, he's a liar, and he may well be a traitor'

Robert Reich was Labor Secretary under Bill Clinton, and also served under Jimmy Carter and Gerald Ford (Getty)

America is “waking up” to the inadequacies of Donald Trump following his humiliating failure to repeal and replace Barack Obama’s Affordable Care Act, a former Secretary of Labor has claimed.

In a Twitter post, Robert Reich described the President as “incompetent” and “a liar”, adding he “may well be a traitor”, in reference to ongoing allegations linking his campaign team to Russia.

“Most of America is now waking up to the walking catastrophe who is now our president,” Mr Reich said.

Mr Reich, who headed the Labor department under President Bill Clinton, picked out three key failures for the Trump administration across what he terms an “Emperor’s New Clothes” week.

He begins by noting that Donald Trump’s “first major legislative goal – repealing and ‘replacing’ the Affordable Care Act – just went down in flames.”

Republican leaders, including House Speaker Paul Ryan, were forced to pull the bill after failing to secure the support of enough lawmakers.

No Democrats backed the bill, which was seen as a take-down of the “Obamacare” programme, while some Republicans refused to support it. Despite nominally controlling both Houses of the United States legislature, Mr Trump and his key allies were forced into a humiliating climb-down.

Introduced by then-President Obama in 2011, the Act aims to reduce Americans’ reliance on costly private health insurance and enable those without insurance to access essential care by introducing subsidies and forcing insurers to accept all applicants.

Secondly, Mr Reich writes, “FBI Director James Comey said the FBI has ‘no evidence’ to support Trump's trumped-up charge that Barack Obama wiretapped or otherwise monitored Donald Trump.”

Contrary to Mr Trump’s claims, it is he who is “the subject of an FBI investigation into possible collusion with Russian operatives to win the 2016 presidential campaign,” Mr Reich says.

“Trump’s braggadocio has now been revealed as a total sham,” Mr Reich concludes. “Apart from his most ardent supporters, most of America is now waking up to the walking catastrophe who is now our president. That’s progress.”

Now a professor at Berkeley University and a political commentator, Mr Reich has previously served under both Democratic and Republican presidents.