Less than three hours after President Trump used Twitter to declare war on the Freedom Caucus, the group’s chairman exuded a remarkable calm. And while Mark Meadows wouldn’t rebut the attack, he would admit that Trump’s tweet made healthcare reform more difficult.
“Does it make it harder?” Meadows asked aloud while sitting in the Washington Examiner’s newsroom. “I think it’s important for us to be intellectually honest. Yes, it does because then the perception is that everyone’s against the Freedom Caucus.”
After Speaker Ryan’s American Health Care Act went down in flames, Meadows’ group of three dozen conservatives largely shouldered the blame. Despite opposition inside the moderate Tuesday Group and the center-right Republican Study Committee, Trump chose to excommunicate the tiny conservative faction, tweeting that “we must fight them.”
According to Meadows, it made an already difficult task of “negotiating in good faith,” that much harder. “Sometimes when you’re negotiating,” he explained, “there are people who feel they have a position of strength because of a leadership position or a tweet.”
While the White House insists they’re moving on from healthcare, congressional lawmakers are still hashing out details on what a second effort might look like. And though the Freedom Caucus might have been ostracized on Capitol Hill, Meadows doesn’t mind. “They’re missing one critical group,” he said, “and that’s the American people. Everybody in DC might be against us. But they’re with us on this one.”
Sitting next to him, his predecessor waved the tweet aside. “Tweets, statements, and blame don’t change facts,” said Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, the former chairman of the Freedom Caucus. “And those facts are that when you read the legislation, it doesn’t do what we said we’d do. It’s that simple.”
Dismissed as cantankerous conservatives during the Obama years, the Freedom Caucus has catapulted into the headlines during Trump’s first 100 days. Though too small to push legislation to the finish line, they’re just big enough to kill any bill they deem unacceptable. Now with a target on their backs, they’re trying to plot their next course of action.
While Meadows and Jordan told the Examiner they’re ready to compromise, they bristle at the president’s suggestion that they need to “get on the team.” They point back to the campaign when they were some of the only Republicans to climb on stage with the beleaguered candidate.
“The president spoke to my team, 20,000 at one rally, 10,000 at another one,” Meadows said. “He spoke to my team when 100,000 votes for him on November 8. That’s my team, his team, and quite frankly the team that will support him in four years if we actually fulfill our promises.”
But Trump doesn’t see the roster that way. Already the president has threatened to primary any member who doesn’t get on board with his agenda. Behind the closed doors of the GOP conference, Trump reportedly said he was even coming after the Freedom Caucus chairman specifically.
“I don’t take it personally,” Meadows said. “When I signed up for this job it was a temporary position and if that means its temporary this year then so be it.” The soft-spoken congressman will soon face reelection in North Carolina’s 11th Congressional District where Trump slightly outperformed him.
This article has been updated to clarify that while Meadows recieved more total votes than Trump, the president defeated Hillary Clinton by a slightly larger margin than the congressman beat his challanger.
Philip Wegmann is a commentary writer for the Washington Examiner.
