Michael Warren is on vacation this week, and Andrew Egger is filling in for him on White House Watch. Michael will be back in the saddle on July 3.
As the Senate prepares to debate the GOP health care bill this week, the Trump administration is working hard to pull together 50 Republican votes to pass it.
No Democrats are expected to support the bill, and Senate leadership is unsure of the support of 8 of their 52 members. As of Sunday, five Republican senators have announced that they will not support the bill in its current form, but are willing to negotiate.
In an interview taped on Thursday, President Donald Trump seemed optimistic about his chances of bringing the holdouts back into the fold, calling them “good guys.”
“I think that they’ll probably get there. We’ll have to see,” Trump said in an interview on “Fox & Friends.” “It’s not that they’re opposed. They would like to get certain changes. And we’ll see if we can take care of that.”
Trump is working hard to see the bill through. Reuters reported that he spent much of Thursday and Friday in phone conversations with Republican senators, including Ted Cruz and majority leader Mitch McConnell. Cruz opposes the bill in its current form.
But the president’s efforts are hindered by the fact that he seems to care more about signing a bill than he does about the policy issues at stake. Several senators who have spoken with Trump about the evolving legislation describe an executive with little apparent understanding of the basic principles of the reforms and virtually no understanding of the details.
Meanwhile, the White House has offered mixed messages on the details of the bill. Trump supported the version of the health care bill that passed the House of Representatives, but last week called that same version “mean.” (House speaker Paul Ryan argued that reporting on Trump’s comment had been “misinterpretation of a private meeting,” but Trump repeated the comment on “Fox & Friends” Sunday.) On Thursday, White House deputy press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders dodged a question about the president’s support for the cuts to Medicaid in the Senate bill.
“I don’t think that the president has specifically weighed in that it’s right to cut Medicaid,” Sanders said.
Trump strikes a centrist pose
As Trump courts the holdouts in his own party, he continues to publicly lash out against the Democrats attempting to stifle his agenda. In an interview with “Fox & Friends” aired Sunday morning, Trump painted himself as an aggrieved centrist who didn’t understand why Democrats were unwilling to come to the table.
“One of the things that should be solved, but it probably won’t be, is that the Republicans and Democrats don’t get together,” Trump told Fox’s Pete Hegseth. “And I’m open arms, but I don’t see that happening. They fight each other. The level of hostility.”
Trump’s conciliatory tone didn’t last long. Later in the interview, he called Democratic senator Elizabeth Warren a “hopeless case.”
“I call her Pocahontas, and that’s an insult to Pocahontas,” Trump said. “I actually think that she is just somebody that’s got a lot of hatred, a lot of anger.”
Appearing on ABC‘s “This Week” Sunday, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer said that Democrats were interested in working with the president.
“We have sent them 10 letters saying sit down with us. We can improve Obamacare. If you stop doing this repeal, which is Trumpcare, highly unpopular with the American people, we’ll sit down with you and make it better,” Schumer said, adding that if the bill failed he would “call the White House the next day” to discuss new possibilities for health care reform.
White House pursues ‘energy dominance’
This week is “Energy Week” at the White House, the latest of the administration’s series of weeks focused on specific policy issues. The White House will talk about expanding U.S. natural gas production, with the goal of making the U.S. “energy dominant.”
Axios reports the week’s schedule: On Monday, Trump “will highlight India’s multibillion-dollar purchases of U.S. natural gas” as India’s prime minister visits the White House. On Wednesday, Trump and Energy Secretary Rick Perry will meet with governors and other officials to discuss energy policy.
Finally, Trump will speak at the Energy Department on Thursday to tout U.S. exports as America draws closer to becoming a net exporter of oil, gas and coal.
Retirement rumors for Justice Kennedy
Could Donald Trump be picking another Supreme Court justice within the next year? The Associated Press reported on Saturday that several former clerks of Justice Anthony Kennedy think he is contemplating stepping down from the high court.
Appearing on ABC’s “This Week” on Sunday, White House aide Kellyanne Conway said she would not reveal conversations between the White House and a sitting justice, but added that “we’re paying very close attention to this last bit of decisions.”
“Just as the president did with Justice Neil Gorsuch, whenever there are vacancies, whenever that happens, he will look for somebody who has fidelity to the Constitution, who doesn’t make up the law as they go along, and somebody who has the judicial temperament and a record that’s beyond reproach, as did Justice Gorsuch,” Conway said.
Given that the Gorsuch nomination was a rare moment of universal conservative acclaim for the Trump administration, the president probably wouldn’t mind the chance to nominate another sometime soon.
Justice Kennedy himself revealed nothing on the subject at a reunion of his former clerks this weekend, although the law blog Above the Law reported that he mentioned the rumors:
“There has been a lot of speculation about a certain announcement from me tonight. And that announcement is: the bar will remain open after the end of the formal program!”
