Congressional Republicans are worried about the midterm elections, White House staffers their job security, but President Trump is moving full speed ahead.
Recent personnel and policy moves, combined with Trump’s usual freewheeling commentary at rallies and on Twitter, show a president shedding constraining influences in his second year of office right as Republicans are trying to defend their congressional majorities, with more to come.
Or as Trump himself put it after firing Secretary of State Rex Tillerson this week, “I’m really at a point where we’re getting very close to having the Cabinet and other things that I want.”
Those things so far have included Tillerson’s ouster; the imposition of steel and aluminum tariffs that precipitated the departure of top economic adviser Gary Cohn; a surprise announcement of talks with North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un to resolve the nuclear weapons impasse; and in general a greater willingness to pursue the more distinctly “Trumpian” parts of his agenda after a year in broad agreement with Capitol Hill Republicans.
As loyalists like Hope Hicks depart the White House, Trump seems to be even more willing to make changes on his own. He personally popped in to give reporters a head’s up on the North Korea announcement, a courtesy he reportedly did not extend to all relevant players inside his administration. He caught many people on both sides of Pennsylvania Avenue off-guard with his tariffs decision.
“What drives President Trump is making good on his campaign promises, and he wants a staff that he trusts and thinks is going to best position his White House to make that happen,” said Republican strategist Ford O’Connell.
To that end, Tillerson will, subject to Senate confirmation, be replaced by CIA Director Mike Pompeo, a former Republican congressman from Kansas who shares Trump’s antipathy toward the Obama administration’s nuclear deal with Iran. Cohn, needled by Trump as a “globalist” who is “not quite as strong on those tariffs” is being supplanted by the telegenic Larry Kudlow (himself a free trader who is “not quite as strong” on tariffs).
“The president is dominating the news cycle now more than ever and is ensuring that he has remained highly visible, especially over the past week,” said Republican strategist Ron Bonjean. “For some it’s exhausting, but his base of supporters love it because they are reminded daily about why they voted for him in the first place.”
Trump has been a team player in promoting the tax cuts he signed into law, which some hoped would usher in a new era of cooperation among Beltway Republicans. But he also refused to budge from his immigration framework to make a bipartisan deal on Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals and has moved forward with proposals on trade and infrastructure that split the GOP. A trial balloon Trump floated in which he seemed more flexible on gun control seems to have been short-lived, however.
After getting generally positive reviews for his polished State of the Union address and even his White House meeting with those affected by the Parkland, Fla., school shooting, Trump has also delivered some real stem-winders. He rambled while rallying on behalf of Pennsylvania Republican congressional candidate Rick Saccone and largely chucked his prepared text at the Conservative Political Action Conference to indulge in crowd-pleasers like his reading of “The Snake.”
“President Trump is also looking at the polls and realizes that Republicans could very well lose the House in 2018,” O’Connell said. “And since he feels he is by far the best advocate for the Trump agenda, we are going to see more of these rally-style speeches to fire up the GOP base.”
“So from this perspective, we are witnessing a ‘Let Trump Be Trump’ moment,” he added. “The campaign trail is where Trump feels most comfortable and where he feels he can most affect the national narrative and policy debates on Capitol Hill.”
Some Republicans are nevertheless spooked by both Trump’s unpredictability and the apparent victory of Democrat Conor Lamb in Pennsylvania’s 18th Congressional District, where the president won by 20 points in 2016 and campaigned this year for his party’s nominee in the special election.
“More chaos. Nothing has changed,” lamented a worried GOP consultant. “He’s not growing into the job at all. He is losing the best and the brightest he has and no one with a brain cell wants to work there. Frankly, who can blame them?”
“Believe me, everybody wants to work in the White House,” Trump assured reporters earlier this month. “They want a piece of the Oval Office, they want a piece of the West Wing.”
The consultant complained Trump “won’t take any responsibility” for getting “his ass kicked in PA-18,” saying, “He’s worse on that front than Obama was.” Democrats hemorrhaged seats in down-ballot races throughout President Barack Obama’s two terms as president.
The New York Times’ Maggie Haberman offers a different theory, one in which Trump now feels more comfortable in the presidency and is in effect saying, “I’ve got this, I can make the changes I want.”
The narrative of Trump unglued is not totally wrong but misses the reason why – he was terrified of the job the first six months, and now feels like he has a command of it.
— Maggie Haberman (@maggieNYT) March 13, 2018
If so, we could see others come and go as Trump elevates those he thinks are on board as opposed to trying to slow him down.
For Republicans, it could be a bumpy ride — with Trump in the driver’s seat.
