Although President-elect Trump has already demonstrated a willingness to break from Republican leaders in Congress, he will soon need their help to implement the sweeping reforms that he promised to shepherd through a political system he has often described as “broken.”
That could leave Trump caught between his anti-establishment rhetoric and his pledge to bring broad policy changes to bear in GOP-controlled Washington.
“To some degree, he’s in a Republican version of the political ‘Catch-22’ that Obama found himself in — he needs to both challenge the status quo and be able to work within it in order to succeed,” said Grant Reeher, a political science professor at Syracuse University.
Unlike Obama, however, Trump faced unprecedented resistance during his campaign for the presidency from the elected officials now tasked with enacting his agenda in Congress. And while tensions have eased between the president-elect and House Speaker Paul Ryan, whom Trump recently likened to a “fine wine,” the new administration may set out with more enemies on Capitol Hill than any other in recent memory.
“Trump is more likely to defend Vladimir Putin than he is to defend Paul Ryan and congressional leaders. Let that sink in,” said Rick Wilson, a Florida-based GOP strategist and vocal Trump critic.
“Trump is about Trump, full stop,” Wilson added. “He’s not engaged in the kind of party-building and party-centric culture that typically exists between presidents and congressional leaders of the same party.”
Reeher suggested Trump’s rocky relationship with Congress could be a lingering effect of his campaign-era spats with several of its most prominent Republican members.
“As both candidate and president-elect, Trump has continually split from, and even picked fights with, institutions which conservatives regard as friendly, as well as members of the Republican Party establishment, including Speaker Ryan,” Reeher said. “The heart of his campaign was a challenge to the establishment — so it’s unlikely that he would drop that as president.”
Even so, Reeher said, Trump aligns with the GOP caucus on the broader policy issues, such as tax reform and repealing Obamacare, which conservatives have pursued for years.
“His success in the first year, measured by realizing some significant policy changes in accord with his campaign, will depend on having a decent working relationship [with Congress] when it comes to those big issues,” Reeher said.
Trump has already indicated his willingness to work closely with Congress. The president-elect and his staff speak frequently with Ryan, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and their offices, and all involved have described their relations as warm and productive.
Vice President-elect Mike Pence, himself a House alum, has proven to be a valuable liaison between the Trump team and members of Congress. He met with Senate Republicans in early December when he attended their weekly lunches and addressed the full House Republican Conference about repealing the Affordable Care Act just days after Congress returned from recess in early January.
But their close contact has not guaranteed that Trump and congressional Republicans will stay on the same page when it comes to policymaking.
In early December, Trump tussled with Republican lawmakers when he touted his plan to implement 35-percent tariffs on companies that move their operations overseas and then attempt to sell their wares back over the U.S. border.
House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy signaled that his conference might be less than receptive to such a proposal, arguing that tax reform would be a “better way of solving the problem than getting into a trade war with a 35 percent tariff.”
Trump’s subsequent refusal to acknowledge the Russian role in election-related cyberattacks has put him at odds with hawkish GOP voices in the Senate, including Sens. Lindsey Graham and John McCain.
Graham, who ran against Trump during the Republican primary, suggested the entire Senate disagrees with the president-elect’s uncertainty over who hacked Democratic inboxes during election season.
“I would say that 99 of us believe the Russians did this and we’re going to do something about it,” the South Carolina senator said on Dec. 27.
The president-elect scolded Republican members on Jan. 3 after the House had voted behind closed doors to weaken the Office of Congressional Ethics, instructing the lawmakers to “focus on tax reform, healthcare and so many other things of far greater importance.” House Republicans quickly scrapped the ethics changes during an emergency meeting held shortly after Trump’s tweet on the matter.
Wilson said the ethics office changes, and their swift undoing, is an example of how Trump’s political instincts have at times led him away from the GOP status quo.
“On the ethics question, for all Trump’s horrific failings, he has a keen nose for the public taste on this kind of question, so of course he threw Ryan under the bus,” Wilson said. “I think this is a non-issue for now, but a sign that if he wants to look good, everyone else gets to look bad.”
Trump wasn’t the only critic of congressional Republicans’ efforts to limit public disclosures out of the Office of Congressional Ethics, an independent body, by placing it under the control of the House Ethics Committee. A number of members suggested their stands were ultimately swayed by a flood of calls from angry constituents, not by Trump’s opposition.
The president-elect has several high-profile battles on the horizon as well.
Trump’s big-ticket infrastructure plan may have attracted the early approval of Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, but it could prove tougher to sell to fiscal conservatives in Congress.
At $10 billion over 10 years, the infrastructure proposal’s price tag has already scared some Republican lawmakers, who have begun to caution against pursuing such legislation without offsetting spending cuts.
And Ryan and Trump diverge on a range of other issues — from skilled guest worker visa programs, which are beloved by big businesses and typically favored by Republicans but which have become a target of Trump, to free trade deals — that could put them on a political collision course.
Reeher suggested Trump will need to pick his battles carefully when he confronts a GOP-led Congress this month if he hopes to pass the biggest components of his agenda.
“I would expect him to depart from Congress on some important and symbolic, but less central, issues that speak to the anti-establishment themes, like the ethics office issue,” Reeher said, “but to be more in line on the big domestic issues he’ll want almost unified Republican backing for.”
