Donald Trump is in trouble on K Street.
Republican lobbyists in Washington had been warming to their party’s presumptive presidential nominee, despite his habit of excoriating them as greedy special interests.
Trump wasn’t the first choice of most.
But they have long viewed the populist New York businessman as a rather non-ideological, pragmatic dealmaker that might put an end to gridlock and be good for their clients and their bottom line.
That made K Street, shorthand jargon for the D.C. lobbying industry, a rare oasis of goodwill toward Trump in a town otherwise skeptical of his ambitions to downright fearful that he might win the White House.
But Trump’s attacks on a federal judge, called “racist” by some of his own supporters, threaten to burn bridges with these connected GOP insiders, costing him badly needed resources and manpower in his race against Hillary Clinton.
“Everybody is wondering if Trump truly wants to win this thing or if we just put a kamikaze pilot in the cockpit of Republican Party,” Republican lobbyist and Trump supporter John Feehery told the Washington Examiner on Friday.
“This might have been a good teaching moment that came early enough to be useful. That is the positive spin on K Street,” added a second GOP lobbyist, who like almost all of the more than half dozen of their colleagues interviewed for this story, requested anonymity in order to speak candidly.
There were some signs in that Trump understands the angst he caused inside the party and need to conduct himself differently.
Speeches Trump delivered on Tuesday and Friday were pre-written and delivered with the help of a teleprompter, as opposed to his typical practice of rambling and ad-libbing.
Just as important, Trump toned down his rhetoric, dropping much of his usual braggadocio and political and cultural invective. In Tuesday evening’s address, Trump promised to make Republicans proud of his leadership.
On Friday afternoon, Trump attempted to clean up the controversy he caused when he accused U.S. District Judge Gonzalo Curiel — who was born and raised in America — of being “Mexican” and therefore unable to fairly preside over a lawsuit involving one of his companies.
“Freedom of any kind means no one should be judged by their race or the color of their skin,” Trump said during a speech to Faith and Freedom Coalition, as it gathered in Washington for an annual conference.
There are a few GOP lobbyists on Trump’s team. But a growing number had expressed a desire to help the real estate mogul raise money for his campaign and promote his message.
Yet Trump’s sanitized rhetoric and presidential demeanor over the past few days, after a couple of choppy weeks that included five days of attacks on Curiel, wasn’t enough to calm nerves and dial back the frustration on K Street.
Trump had a slate of mega-rallies scheduled across the country over the next 10 days, beginning Friday evening in Richmond, Va. Republicans are interested to see how Trump handles himself in the very setting that has periodically gotten him into political trouble.
Indeed, Trump first criticized Curiel for being a “Mexican” unprompted during a campaign rally early this month in San Diego.
“People were starting to come around,” said a Republican lobbyist and former congressional aide. “Since this latest gaffe, I sense the momentum has completely halted. One more outburst and he’s totally out.”
Trump was declared the presumptive Republican presidential nominee in early May. After a sweeping victory in the Indiana primary on May 3, his remaining competitors, Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas and Ohio Gov. John Kasich, exited the race and made way for Trump.
Republican elected officials were slow to embrace Trump, and he appeared disinterested in warming to them.
But GOP voters who had supported other primary candidates consolidated behind him pretty quickly, according to public opinion polls. That led to a bump in surveys that pitted him against Clinton, who only this week became the presumptive Democratic nominee.
Like other Republicans who saw Trump’s rise in the polls, GOP lobbyists grew optimistic he could win. For many, Trump’s growing strength reaffirmed their belief that the brash businessman was a better choice than Cruz, who they viewed as an intractable ideologue.
The flap over the judge, and the way Trump handled it, shattered that confidence, especially since this isn’t Trump’s first brush with controversy and his poll numbers have since dropped.
Many are wondering if he’s at all capable of pivoting and running the kind of focused campaign required to beat Clinton.
“They are resigned to an uphill battle for Trump,” a veteran Republican lobbyist and political strategist said. “The only thing sustaining him is the elaborate weaknesses of Hillary Clinton.”
