White House Watch: Is Trump Ready to Sell the Republican Tax Plan?

But according to Politico, Republicans were still “scrambling” on Tuesday to finalize the details of the plan, and Jonathan Swan of Axios reported Tuesday night that the release would be delayed until Thursday. Later on Tuesday, however, the GOP chair of the House tax-writing committee, Kevin Brady, said there was “no change in the schedule” and vowed to work through the night—that is, until Brady released a statement confirming he would release the text of the bill on Thursday after consulting with “President Trump and our leadership team.”

The White House is framing the delay as a minor change, from Wednesday afternoon to Thursday morning, in order to ensure everyone is in the loop. But the late-night meetings and possible delays reveal how difficult the challenge is for Republicans to pay for their desired tax cuts by shoring up revenue elsewhere. Lawmakers have floated a number of changes to deductions, each with their own constituencies who want to protect them. And despite the White House intending to leave the difficult job of hammering things out to Congress, President Trump has in recent weeks stepped in to take certain ideas—like limiting pre-tax contributions to 401(k) retirement plans—seemingly off the table.

White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders has not been so willing to comment on what the president prefers (or doesn’t prefer). “We’ve laid out our priorities for the tax cut plan. Those haven’t changed,” she said when asked Tuesday where the president stands on the deduction for state and local taxes, which benefit residents of high-tax states. What about the mortgage-interest deduction? “We haven’t made any changes to the priorities that we’ve laid out,” Sanders said. “I’m not going to negotiate between you and I. But the president is going to be involved in ongoing conversations with members of both the House and Senate, and we’ve laid out what our priorities are and we’re going to stick to those as we move forward.”

One of those conversations happened Tuesday at the White House, where House speaker Paul Ryan met with Trump to update him on the state of the tax reform effort. “The leaders agreed on the urgency of helping the middle class by enacting historic tax reform by the end of the year,” read a statement from Ryan’s office following the meeting. “The speaker outlined the House’s schedule to follow this week’s introduction of tax reform legislation with committee and floor action in the coming weeks. The speaker and President Trump both expressed eagerness to finish the year by delivering results for the American people.”

Eagerness is important, but it alone won’t be enough to do the political heavy lifting needed to “deliver results” on taxes for the American people. Ryan will need to get his Republican conference, which makes up a solid but unpredictable majority of the House, fully on board. Mitch McConnell will need to do the same with his much narrower margin in the Senate. And, as always, there’s the question of whether Trump will be a reliable asset to sell the plan to wary Republicans on the Hill and the American people at large.

One reporter at Tuesday’s briefing asked the question straight up: Will the president fully support the legislation the House releases? “As of right now, we see no reason to feel otherwise,” Sanders said. But until we see the details of that, I’m not going to speculate on where we are.”

Must-Read on Tax Reform—My colleague Tony Mecia goes through the questions, and possible answers, regular Americans will have about what the GOP is preparing to propose.

On Tuesday’s Terror Attack—Here’s the White House’s official statement:

And here is what President Trump tweeted Tuesday night.

The White House continued its attacks on former campaign adviser George Papadopoulos, whose guilty plea and cooperation with the special counsel investigation could prove to be a headache for the administration.

Trump himself began the offensive with a pair of Tuesday-morning tweets that again denied collusion with Russia and called Papadopoulos a “young, low level volunteer” who “has already proven to be a liar.”

Press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders told reporters Tuesday afternoon that Papadopoulos’s legal troubles were actually the result of the White House cooperating with the investigation.

“I think Papadopoulos is an example of actually somebody doing the wrong thing while the president’s campaign did the right thing,” Sanders said. “All of his emails were voluntarily provided to the special counsel by the campaign, and that is what led to the process and the place that we’re in, was the campaign fully cooperating and helping with that. What Papadopoulos did was lie, and that’s on him, not on the campaign.”

Lying to the FBI is indeed what got Papadopoulos in hot water to begin with. But it’s his willingness to plead guilty that the Trump administration will have to contend with in the weeks ahead.

Mueller Watch—Via Politico: “Mueller schedules interview with Hope Hicks”

Parody of the Day

From Reason:

President Trump will head to Japan on Friday, the first stop on a 12-day trip that will take him to five Asian nations and two major economic gatherings.

Trump will appear at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations summit to push his protectionist trade agenda. The United States continues to renegotiate trade deals in Asia following its January withdrawal from the multilateral Trans-Pacific Partnership.

“The president, from his own experience before he was in politics, gave him a very firm conviction that on a bilateral basis he would be able to achieve higher standards and better terms for American workers and for American businesses, and also do a better job of upholding those high standards that the U.S. relies on,” a senior administration official told reporters Tuesday.

Trump will also discuss the growing threat of North Korea in meetings with the leaders of China, South Korea, and Japan.

“On November 8, President Trump will arrive in Beijing that afternoon for a series of bilateral, commercial, and cultural events, including meetings with President Xi Jinping,” the official said. “I anticipate that the president will seek to secure China’s commitments to exert more pressure on North Korea and to rebalance U.S.-China economic relations.”

The White House did not clarify whether Trump will meet with Russian president Vladimir Putin during the trip.

2018 Watch—Jeb Hensarling, the Texas Republican and chairman of the House Financial Services committee, will not run for reelection next year. David Drucker reports:

Song of the Day— “Do You Trust Me?” by Blanche