In President Trump’s politics, “the overall impression matters more than the details,” writes Newt Gingrich in his book Understanding Trump. This is not only true and insightful, it also explains Trump’s conduct of late.
Out of the blue, the president made a deal with Chuck Schumer, the top Senate Democrat and an old pal from New York, to support a brief lifting of the debt limit. Trump got practically nothing tangible in return from the minority leader.
But that was merely an insignificant detail. For Trump, it wasn’t the point of the deal. The favorable impressions he generated were. He embraced bipartisanship, which most Americans say they like. He jilted congressional Republicans, who fare slightly worse than he does in polls. And the media accounts of the deal were generally positive, a rare phenomenon in the president’s case.
Several days later, Trump invited a bipartisan group of House members to the White House. Before they met, he insisted the wealthy “will not be gaining at all” from his tax plan. If tax rates on individual income “have to go higher, they’ll go higher, frankly.”
Shutting out the rich is not a new theme for Trump. When economists Larry Kudlow and Steve Moore put together his tax proposal in last year’s campaign, he told them he didn’t want to be accused of lining his own pockets. So in his plan, the gain from a rate reduction would be offset by eliminating deductions for top earners.
In April, the White House put out a statement that promised cuts in the tax rates for business and individuals. But now he’s talking up either no tax cut for the well-off, or even a hike for them. This would have repercussions, weakening incentives for private investment and lowering economic growth and job creation. It might not even bring in more revenue.
The impression Trump is creating is that he’s sensitive to the need of the middle class for tax cuts, the rich be damned. I think he’s sincere about this. Still, the chances of a deal with Democrats are slim. And it would involve a slew of details. The impression is more important than the bill.
Then came the president’s dinner at the White House with Schumer and his counterpart in the House, Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, after which Democrats claimed Trump had agreed to quick passage of a law to treat 800,000 “dreamers”—the offspring of illegal immigrants—as legal residents.
Trump aides denied there was a deal, but the president said the parties are close to one. They’re working on details. The president had been alarmed by hostility to his plan to require Congress to pass a law legalizing the dreamers in exchange for new border security measures with Mexico. Building a wall would not be part of the deal.
As with the debt-limit accord, Trump would get very little in exchange for protecting dreamers from deportation. But an actual law isn’t necessary to create a favorable impression of Trump’s role. His public sympathy with the fate of dreamers is enough for that.
Even discussing a deal on dreamers, however, is risky for Trump. Prominent supporters reacted angrily to reports of a deal. Some cited his failure to insist on building the wall as the price for reaching a deal. The president tweeted limply that the wall “will continue to be built.”
Trump’s usual tactic is to blame House speaker Paul Ryan or Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell when failures occur. He never accepts blame. Since Ryan opposes deporting the dreamers, it would not be surprising if the president said Ryan and other Republicans had forced him to negotiate with Democrats.
Steve Bannon, Trump’s chief strategist before departing the White House recently, said on 60 Minutes last week that Ryan and McConnell oppose the Trump agenda. Breitbart News, which Bannon now runs, is a longtime Ryan antagonist.
Yet the House voted to repeal and replace Obamacare, de-federalize Medicaid, fund the border wall, and use the Congressional Review Act to kill more than a dozen regulations imposed by President Obama.
Trump allies accuse Ryan of favoring open borders, though he doesn’t. The president has called for immediately taking up tax reform in the House, as if Ryan and Republicans are dragging their feet.
But the culprits are Trump and his advisers. They haven’t made up their minds on a final version of the tax bill. Just last week, Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin was talking up different tax rates for companies with factories and those, like accounting firms, that provide services. Meanwhile, the president can’t make up his mind on taxing the rich.
Trump has tweeted his unhappiness with McConnell over the Senate’s failure to pass the Republican health care bill. It lost by a single vote. The rule of thumb in Washington on a close vote is that the president can produce the final vote or two needed to win. Trump didn’t deliver on that.
McConnell is responsible for the most dazzling success of Trump’s presidency, the confirmation of conservative Neil Gorsuch to the Supreme Court. He blocked Obama from putting a nominee on the Court in the final year of his presidency. Democrats howled, but McConnell didn’t flinch. He delivered for Trump.
Where is all this leading? If Trump isn’t careful, he’ll blow his chance for a mighty success that few presidents could claim, one more immune to compromise with Democrats than tax reform. Trump can fill the federal courts, from the Supreme Court down, with conservatives. There are plenty of vacancies and even more impressive conservatives to nominate. But he’ll have to work effectively with McConnell and quit attacking GOP senators whose reelection is necessary to keep the Senate in Republican hands. On this as on much else, details matter.
Trump’s growing alienation from Republicans doesn’t suggest a promising future. He can’t switch parties because Democrats loathe him. If he were to break entirely from the GOP, that would mean running as an independent. I suspect Trump has thought about this. It might even work. Never again should anyone say Donald Trump can’t win.
Fred Barnes is an executive editor at The Weekly Standard.
