It was like a scene out of “The Apprentice,” with Donald Trump directing televised discussion around a conference table, working to find some common ground among a group of people split by sharp disagreements.
The president’s bipartisan meeting on gun control this week caught some observers by surprise, as Trump signaled openness to measures not typically backed by Republicans, and repeatedly jabbed at the National Rifle Association while also lauding the group.
It was an exhibition in the politics of practicality Trump at one point seemed poised to bring to Washington.
For many voters, the president’s ostensible independence as a solutions-oriented businessman, largely untethered to the infrastructure of a political party, had great appeal. They wanted someone to buck Washington’s staid conventions and just figure things outs, with no regard for the demands of interest groups or think tanks or major donors.
But as most could have predicted, after the primary, Trump folded his campaign into the infrastructure of the Republican Party, and developed the requisite relationships with conservative movement groups like the NRA, nudging his administration rightward on some issues on which he probably either has no opinion or is more of a centrist.
For conservatives, Trump’s relationship with the movement has served as a safeguard, preventing him from taking a more centrist approach to issues on which their base is firm. For Trump, that relationship has given him an infrastructure and many built-in defenders. But Trump’s base is not the same as the conservative movement’s base, nor is his enigmatic set of personal convictions neatly aligned with their own. Look no further than the White House as evidence, where Mike Pence and Marc Short mingle with Ivanka Trump and Gary Cohn.
More meetings like Wednesdays could boost the president’s appeal with independents, the folks who hoped he would function as a business-minded person inclined to find bipartisan solutions rather than adhere to ideology at the cost of moving legislation forward. But that could also cost the president big with his conservative base, people who elected him because he said the right things on matters like immigration (and have chafed at some of his negotiations in office) and gun rights to win their favor.
In either case, it’s a reminder that Trump is caught between two worlds, calculating whether it’s best to do what he personally believes is right, what his party believes is right, and what to do when the question at hand is one to which he has no firm ideological answer.
