TRUMP
REMAINS THE CENTER OF ATTENTION, BUT HE’S INCREASINGLY ISOLATED POLITICALLY
Abby
Phillip, Robert Costa
For a
second consecutive weekend, Trump remained in Washington — tweeting in the
morning, holding meetings at the White House and heading to his Virginia golf
club on Sunday — all the time surrounded by aides and patrons yet,
increasingly, politically marooned.
Weighed
down by dismal approval ratings, the president has been unable to wrangle
enough allies in Congress to advance his agenda and is searching for outside
support to defend him from attacks coming from all sides.
Ahead
of his 100th day in office later this month, Trump has struggled to build a
governing coalition that matches the nontraditional alliance that put him in
the Oval Office. And he has turned to making enemies out of former supporters
among Republicans in Congress, even as Democrats keep him at arm’s length.
“He
seems both politically and personally isolated these days,” said David Gergen,
a former adviser to Democratic and Republican presidents dating back to Richard
Nixon. “He’s flailing because he doesn’t know where to find his natural
allies.”
The
result has been a presidency lacking in significant victories, beset by major
stumbles — including the downfall of the Republicans’ health-care bill and his
travel ban on six Muslim-majority countries — and that is increasingly the
target of litigation as a result of executive actions, especially
related to the environment.
There
are more potential roadblocks ahead. Already, congressional Republicans have
balked at his proposed budget, and the White House’s insistence on increased
spending for the military and wall along the U.S.-Mexico border could imperil a spending
bill needed to keep the government running past the end of April.
No easy
resolution has appeared, and despite loose talk from White House aides and
staff-level conversations this week, little has been done to court Democratic
support for his priorities. And most Democrats remain wary of Trump’s hard-line
policies and incendiary persona.
“Part
of it is self-imposed,” former Republican National Committee chairman Michael
Steele said of Trump’s challenges and political drift, adding that many key
players often find it difficult to build a bond with 70-year-old executive.
“People know him, they see him at meetings, but it’s been hard for people in
Congress and around it to get to know him in a way that’s helpful for Trump.”
The
White House last week resorted to threats against Democrats and members of its
own party in an effort to push members to the negotiating table on repealing
the Affordable Care Act and replacing it with the American Health Care Act, a
Republican alternative championed by Speaker Paul D. Ryan (R-Wis.) but
beleaguered by opposition from conservative groups.
But
weeks of early, politically damaging battles over controversial policies and an
ongoing probe into his campaign’s ties to Russian interference in the election
have left Trump with the lowest
approval rating of any president since Harry Truman. Most of the
right wing Republican House members in the Freedom Caucus, now in the
president’s crosshairs, outperformed him in the past election, giving them
little incentive to cooperate.
“That’s
what happens when you have an unpopular president … popularity scares people,”
said Ari Fleischer a former adviser to President George W. Bush. “Lack of
popularity emboldens them.”
The
unrest extends to personnel and the Trump political operation. Last week,
Deputy Chief of Staff Katie Walsh left the White House to help prop up an
outside group, which aims to provide air cover for the president in the
legislative battles ahead after a health-care effort that left him exposed to
criticism from the left and the right.
In the
West Wing, frustration abounds. For a president fixated on winning, people
close to him say he is anxious to find out what went wrong with his team’s
health-care push and get to a deal on that issue or another front such as taxes
or infrastructure as fast as possible.
Christopher
Ruddy, the Newsmax Media chief executive and a friend of Trump’s, said the
lesson learned within the White House is to be more careful moving forward when
it comes to trusting Congress and the leadership’s whip counts.
“The
White House did the right thing. Ryan carried the luggage here. He delivered it
and it was damaged goods,” Ruddy said of the health legislation. “They wanted
to work with Congress, they accepted the congressional plan and it blew up on
them. Now they realize they can’t do that in the future.”
Although
the White House has not settled on a clear path forward, a partial strategy has
taken shape on social media: going after the ideological purists who blocked
Trump on health care. After dealing initially dealing with the House Freedom
Caucus with a carrot, Trump has settled on a stick, promising to “fight”
Freedom Caucus members along with Democrats in 2018.
Among
them: Rep. Mark Meadows (R-N.C.), a Trump supporter who defended him during one
of the darkest periods of his campaign, when lewd “Access Hollywood” video emerged
of Trump discussing grabbing women. Trump courted Meadows in meetings and
calls, and now White House aides say he feels scorned by Meadows and fellow
Freedom Caucus members — and keeps close watch of their television appearances
and how they talk about him.
But
some conservative leaders say the tensions between Trump and the Freedom Caucus
could be fleeting because the president may eventually need them to enact
legislation in the coming months.
“I
think there’s a lot of frustration all around town,” said Michael Needham,
chief executive of Heritage Action, which backed Freedom Caucus members in
opposing the AHCA. “In a couple of weeks people will look back and people will
say the coalition in the Republican House and the Senate is a center-right coalition
that wants to get big things done.”
Trump
showed some signs over the weekend of softening his assault on conservatives in
Congress. On Sunday morning, he tweeted out a more positive message about unity
on health care — “Anybody (especially Fake News media) who thinks that Repeal
& Replace of Obamacare is dead does not know the love and strength in R
Party!” — and later went golfing with Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.), a staunch
opponent of the bill who lobbied House conservatives to oppose it.
But
building support will take more than schmoozing. Needham argued that the White
House and congressional leadership asked Republicans to make a politically
impossible decision on health care — casting a vote in support of a bill that
had a 17 percent public approval rating, according to a recent Quinnipiac poll.
That
angst remains pervasive with members wondering whether Trump is backing the
right kind of bills, the sort of agenda that could lift him and the GOP ahead
of the 2018 midterms.
Rep.
Rod Blum (R-Iowa), a House Freedom Caucus member, said his office surveyed
thousands of constituents about the health-care bill and found the response to
be “overwhelmingly against it” — not just among Democrats, but independents and
Republicans, too.
“I feel
pressure, yes, I do: I feel pressure to say no,” he said. “They’re
overwhelmingly, resoundingly saying, ‘Thank you for being a no.’ ”
As a
candidate, Trump leapfrogged over his opponents by running an
anti-establishment outsider campaign. He pitched a populist infrastructure
bill, tax reform and a border wall — all of which have been held up by a push
for a health-care bill more closely associated with long-standing Washington Republican
dogma and that critics say fails to address Trump’s promise of making health
care less expensive and more widely accessible.
Some
among Trump’s closest allies are urging him to abandon hard-liners in the
Republican conference and strike a deal with Democrats on health care and on
other issues.
“The
president is a dealmaker, and he realizes that 30 members of the House
shouldn’t control the process,” Ruddy added. “He is looking for a way to
develop a majority that doesn’t include them.”
Striking
such a deal would likely require even more political acumen than bringing
Republicans in line, as it could risk alienating the Republican leadership in
Congress and the conservative base. And it would also necessitate that Trump
find an ally he can trust on the other side of the aisle.
“You
look at George W. Bush, who worked with Ted Kennedy early on with education,
Trump is going to have find somebody he can work with on the other side,” Rep.
Peter T. King (R-N.Y.) said. “He knows he has appeal to people because he’s not
ideological, but he has to find out how he can get out of the Republican
straitjacket and build the relationships, figure out a coalition for taxes, for
infrastructure.”
Democrats
also are wary of striking deals with a president who so easily lashes out at
his allies.
“Right
now he looks, I don’t know, in personal disarray,” said House Democratic leader
Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.). “In some ways, he had a successful campaign, ‘Make
America Great Again,’ something that is obviously very appealing to many
people.
“He’s
interpreting that as a personal endorsement,” she added. “Members of Congress
vote their district; they don’t necessarily vote their president. The powers of
persuasion that worked on the campaign trail aren’t going to seal the deal in
Washington.”
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Mike
DeBonis contributed to this report.
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