President Donald Trump doesn’t believe in a political law of gravity.
The more his standing sinks with the country at large — a host of polls show it near its lowest ever — the more he bends the Republican Party to his will and endangers the obeisant GOP’s prospects in the fall with unpopular and even brazen actions.
The result is a president historically strong at demanding political fealty within his party but prone to executive actions that alienate the broader public. That paradox has fostered a disinclination — and weakened ability — to act with Congress on issues that matter most to voters, a cycle that Trump is unwilling, or unable, to break.
On Tuesday, Trump bagged the trophy he had coveted more than any other, the ouster of libertarian Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Kentucky). The eight-term congressman is the president’s most prominent GOP critic in the House and led the charge, resisted by Trump until he realized he couldn’t stop it, to release the government’s files on convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.
Massie was trounced in his primary by a heretofore political unknown, former Navy SEAL Ed Gallrein, handpicked by Trump and funded with tens of millions of dollars from his allied organizations.
Massie’s defeat followed by three days the loss by Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-Louisiana), whom the president had deemed “very disloyal.” Cassidy had voted to convict in Trump’s second impeachment trial in the Senate five years ago over the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol. Though the senator had endeavored, often awkwardly, to mend his relationship with the president, Cassidy didn’t even make the runoff.
Earlier this month, Trump’s retribution tour swept through Indiana, where Republican voters heeded his call and swept out five of the seven state senators he had targeted for having resisted his demand that they redraw congressional district lines in the state. (One race, in which the candidates are two votes apart in the latest count, has yet to be decided.)
The president flexed his muscle again Tuesday, by endorsing Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton over incumbent John Cornyn in Tuesday’s GOP Senate primary runoff in the Lone Star State. The move dismayed many Republicans on Capitol Hill, because Cornyn had been seen as a far stronger general-election candidate; if Paxton wins, Republicans probably will have to invest hundreds of millions — money that might be needed to shore up candidates elsewhere — to get their candidate over the finish line in a deeply red state.
But as is often the case, Trump made clear this decision was personal, not tactical or policy-driven. Cornyn had occasionally been critical of Trump in the past, though he had recently been doing his best to ingratiate himself, including by recently introducing legislation to name one of the longest highways in the country after the president.
It was to no avail. “John Cornyn is a good man, and I worked well with him, but he was not supportive of me when times were tough,” Trump wrote in his statement on social media endorsing Paxton.
“I think MAGA’s never been more together, actually,” Trump told reporters Tuesday. But it will take no small amount of support from the rest of the electorate for Republicans to maintain their hold on Congress in the fall election, in which the president sees his own political survival at stake.
“You got to win the midterms because if we don’t win the midterms, it’s just going to be — I mean, they’ll find a reason to impeach me. I’ll get impeached,” he told House Republicans at a retreat in January.
But right now, the biggest drag on the party’s ability to retain its slim majorities in the House and the Senate is Trump. A New York Times/Siena poll out Monday was only the latest in which the public strongly disapproved of the war that Trump launched in Iran and his handling of the cost of living. Even on immigration, his strongest issue, the president was underwater by 15 points.
Trump’s approval among crucial independents cratered to 26 percent in the poll, with 47 percent saying his policies had hurt them, up from 41 percent in the fall. And the poll figure probably most alarming to Republicans is that Democrats were found to be more enthusiastic about voting this year and hold an 11-point edge on the hypothetical question of which party voters would cast a ballot for were the election held today.
Meanwhile, even Republicans have been unsettled by some of Trump’s recent eyebrow-raising actions, including the settlement reached with the IRS over the $10 billion lawsuit he filed early this year over the leak of his tax returns.
The agreement sets up a $1.8 billion, taxpayer-paid compensation fund for those who claim, as Trump does, that they have been victims of a politicized justice system. Beneficiaries presumably would include people who were charged with committing violent actions during the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol by Trump supporters seeking to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election that he lost.
“Not a big fan,” Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-South Dakota) told reporters Tuesday when asked about the fund.
Democrats were blunter.
“This is corruption that has never been more blatant or more widespread,” Sen. Patty Murray (D-Washington) said during a hearing featuring acting attorney general Todd Blanche. “But what is happening is that you write the check, Trump and his cronies cash it. American taxpayers — who are already being whacked with high prices — are going to foot the bill.”
Under the settlement, Trump and his sons are prohibited from personally collecting money from the so-called “anti-weaponization” fund, but the IRS would also be “forever barred and precluded” from pursuing unpaid tax claims against Trump, members of his family or his businesses that arose before the settlement was reached.
As aggressive as Trump has been with his unilateral actions, his political weakness has lessened his leverage when it comes to getting things done through the legislative branch, where much of his agenda is stalled.
Neither Thune nor House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-Louisiana) has embraced Trump’s call to suspend the gas tax, and the Senate has resisted his call to end the filibuster, in part so it can pass his high-priority Save America Act, which includes a provision that would require that people prove their citizenship to register to vote. Trump claims the bill is necessary for election security, but opponents say it would lead to voter suppression.
A more recent irritant to Trump is the Senate parliamentarian’s refusal to allow hundreds of millions to pay for the security aspects of his highly unpopular White House ballroom project to be tucked into a bill under consideration that would fund immigration enforcement.
For Trump, there may also be a dark cloud to go with the golden lining of defeats he has dealt to Republican incumbents. They are all going to be around until January and presumably less cowed by him.
On Tuesday, fresh off his primary loss, Cassidy committed an act of defiance in voting for the first time to advance a resolution to block Trump from ordering further strikes on Iran.
“In Louisiana, I’ve heard from people, including President Trump’s supporters, who are concerned about this war,” Cassidy said in a statement.
In an interview in February, Massie had told The Washington Post, “I have some colleagues that are just waiting to get past their primaries to develop a little more of an independent voice.”
Given how things are going, that might be what they have to do for the sake of their own survival.
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