White House Watch: Trump Picks a Fight With Congressional Republicans

That “V.A.” bill is a law (the Veterans Appeals Improvement and Modernization Act) Trump signed this week. A Republican Senate source reminds me that Republican leader Mitch McConnell reportedly floated the idea of attaching a veterans bill to the debt ceiling increase last month, before the August recess.

House speaker Paul Ryan, in a CNBC interview Thursday, dismissed the idea that Trump’s tweets were a shot at him, saying the veterans bill idea just couldn’t work. “That’s an option we were looking at but the VA deadline came up and we weren’t able to do that then,” Ryan said. The idea went nowhere, my Senate source says, because House Freedom Caucus members—the most hawkish on the debt—hated the idea of having to choose between raising the debt ceiling or voting against a bill to help veterans.

The question about the VA bill and the debt ceiling misses the bigger signal from Trump’s tweets: He’s blaming the coming “mess”—Congress will return from its recess needing to address the debt ceiling, the budget, and the legislative agenda—on Republican leadership. That’s a short-term political no-brainer for Trump—even among Republicans, the GOP-controlled Congress has a 17 percent approval rating in the latest Quinnipiac poll. And if and when little gets done, Trump will have built a case over several months that Republicans in Congress are the ones putting up the roadblocks to his agenda.

An unproductive 2017 leaves the Republicans in an even more difficult place for the 2018 midterms. And then there is Trump’s antagonism toward incumbents like Jeff Flake in seats that could go Democratic next year and his penchant for creating headaches for the likes of McConnell and Ryan on a near-daily basis.

When asked about the intra-party tension at Thursday’s briefing, White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders didn’t do much to downplay the obvious.

“Look, I think the relationships are fine,” said Sanders. “Certainly there are going to be some policy differences, but there are also a lot of shared goals. And that’s what we’re focused on.”

Mark It Down—“The president is committed to making sure this gets done.” – Sarah Huckabee Sanders, on securing funding to build the border wall, August 24, 2017.

President Trump’s tweets may be official White House statements, but that doesn’t mean the White House is interested in defending them. On Thursday, Sanders dodged a question about Trump last week repeating a debunked story about General John Pershing, the legendary Army officer.

The claim is that Pershing, while fighting Muslim rebels in the Philippines, dipped bullets in pig’s blood before firing them. Trump frequently made references to this urban legend about Pershing on the campaign trail, which earned a “Pants on Fire” rating from Politifact.

“Does the president know that the story is false, and if so why does he keep repeating it?” the reporter asked. “And why does the White House think it’s appropriate for the president to perpetuate this false story if he hasn’t been informed that it’s not true?

“I haven’t had a chance to ask him about that,” Sanders responded, “so I can’t speak to it.”

When the reporter pressed her further, Sanders dodged again: “I didn’t say no one had, I said I hadn’t had that conversation, so I wasn’t going to speak to something I wasn’t aware of.”

Pardon Watch—Sanders also declined Thursday to provide more information on the fate of controversial immigration hardliner Sheriff Joe Arpaio, whom Trump all but said he would pardon at his campaign rally Tuesday night.

“Was Sheriff Joe convicted for doing his job? He should have had a jury,” Trump said. “But you know what? I’ll make a prediction: I think he’s gonna be just fine, OK? But I won’t do it tonight, because I don’t want to cause any controversy, is that OK? But Sheriff Joe can feel good.”

Arpaio was found guilty of criminal contempt in July for flouting a judge’s 2011 order to stop rounding up immigrants who were not suspected of committing crimes. On Thursday, CNN reported that the White House was already preparing paperwork and talking points for surrogates for allies for when the pardon is officially announced.

“When we have an announcement on what that decision is after that’s completed we’ll let you know,” Sanders said.

Must Read of the Day—This detailed account of how White House chief of staff John Kelly is trying to control the flow of information that reaches the Resolute Desk in the Oval Office is fascinating. Read Eliana Johnson and Nancy Cook of Politico on the “quiet effort to make Trump conform to White House decision-making norms he’s flouted without making him feel shackled or out of the loop.”

Song of the Day—“Mr. Blue Sky” by Electric Light Orchestra.