Kicking off his surprise press conference with Mitch McConnell at the White House Monday afternoon, Donald Trump made the message of the day perfectly clear: “Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell . . . has been a friend of mine for a long time.”
It’s not the most natural of friendships, but the president and the GOP leader emerged from their lunch (Vice President Mike Pence was in attendance as well) to put aside publicly their differences of the past several months. “My relationship with this gentleman is outstanding, has been outstanding,” said Trump, despite several instances of public disagreement between the two Republicans over the stalled GOP agenda.
McConnell echoed Trump’s sentiments in his own way. “We are together totally on this agenda to move America forward,” said the Kentucky Republican.
What is that agenda, for those keeping track at home? “We are working very hard to get the tax cuts,” Trump said. “We will continue to work hard to get the healthcare completed. I’m going to be surprising some people with an economic development bill later on, but I haven’t even told Mitch because I want to focus on tax cuts and some other things right now.”
McConnell had a slightly different shine. “Legislatively, obviously the top priority is tax reduction,” he said. He also noted the role the Senate has in confirming presidential appointments. But there was no talk of health care or “economic development”—whatever that means—from McConnell.
One issue that united the men in their remarks, and which may have forged a temporary detente between the two groups of Washington Republicans, were judicial appointments. “But something that people aren’t talking about is how many judges we’ve had approved, whether it be the court of appeals, circuit judges, whether it be district judges,” Trump said. McConnell expanded on this further:
I’m told much of their lunchtime discussion focused on these appointments, and particularly that further success on judges and the rest of the GOP agenda requires comity—not the kind of back-and-forth that, say, Trump and Bob Corker have been engaged in recently.
There’s no telling how long the peace will last—Trump is unpredictable. But whatever was said in Monday’s meeting seems to have temporarily brokered a truce.
That’s of great importance to McConnell, who will need as much unity, and as a little presidential interference, as possible over the next several days as he navigates the budget and tax reform battles.
And it’s already an improvement over earlier in the day! During a cabinet meeting Monday morning, President Trump talked up the Steve Bannon-led effort to primary Republican incumbents in primaries next year:
“They are not getting the job done,” Trump said of the GOP majority. “We’ve had healthcare approved, and then you had the surprise vote by John McCain. We’ve had other things happen, and they’re not getting the job done. And I can understand where Steve Bannon is coming from. And I can understand . . . where a lot of people are coming from because I’m not happy about it and a lot of people aren’t happy about it.”
But after his meeting with McConnell, Trump sang a slightly different tune. “Steve has been a friend of mine for a long time,” the president said. “I like Steve a lot. Steve is doing what Steve thinks is the right thing. Some of the people that he may be looking at, I’m going to see if we talk him out of that, because, frankly, they’re great people.”
Knowing Trump, this new stance is probably also subject to change.
Photo of the Day
Mark It Down— “One thing we’re going to be looking at very strongly is welfare reform.” —Donald Trump, October 16, 2017
Tax Reform Watch—President Trump’s Tuesday evening address at the conservative Heritage Foundation, I’m told by the White House, will focus on tax reform.
Baseball Watch—I’m not sure if this is even remotely likely, but this proposal to expand Major League Baseball by two teams, then break up the traditional National and American leagues into four geographic divisions, seems like an abomination.
The Washington Post and CBS’s 60 Minutes have both published deeply investigated pieces linking the opioid crisis of the last several years to the declawing of the federal drug enforcers. To top it off, a new law supposedly codifying these strictures on the feds was drafted by Republican congressman Tom Marino, who is now President Trump’s pick for drug czar.
The Post has the details about how the law “hobbled” the Drug Enforcement Administration’s ability to stop drug companies from supplying narcotics to crooked doctors and pharmacists selling them on the black market. But over at National Review Online, Robert VerBruggen raises interesting questions about the reports’ glossing over how the DEA never seemed to raise much of a fuss over Marino’s bill, which got a rewrite in the Senate and was signed into law by Barack Obama in 2016.
Here’s VerBruggen:
Read the whole thing here.
Lawsuit Alert—From CNN: “Trump campaign subpoenaed over sexual assault allegations.”
Song of the Day—“You’re My Best Friend” by Queen
