Trump Deal With Democrats Shocks Republicans, Shakes Up Washington Politicos

WHITE HOUSE — 

Washington’s political establishment is reeling a day after President Donald Trump blindsided Republican congressional leaders, siding with Democrats on a three-month debt ceiling extension that puts his own party in an awkward spot with midterm elections little more than a year away.

Republican reaction to the deal has veered from bewilderment to anger to support of a deal they see as playing into Democratic hands.

“It’s just a betrayal of everything we’ve been talking about for years as Republicans,” influential former Senator Jim DeMint said in an interview with Politico.

The chairman of the conservative House Freedom Caucus, Rep. Mark Meadows, was more conciliatory. At a Bloomberg News breakfast meeting Thursday with Congressional reporters, Meadows said Trump told him he had cut the debt ceiling deal so he could focus attention on tax reform. He is “myopically focused on trying to get tax reform,” Meadows said.

The deal left Republican congressional leaders, House Majority leader Sen. Mitch McConnell land House Speaker Paul Ryan, with egg on their faces (in an embarrassing position). Hours before meeting Trump with other Congressional leaders Wednesday at the White House, Ryan had called the idea of a three-month debt extension “ridiculous,” telling reporters it was “disgraceful that they [Democrats] want to play politics with the debt ceiling.”

But many Trump supporters cheered the president’s apparent rebuke of the Republican leadership. Former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee, in an interview with Fox News, called the deal a “shrewd move” designed to put pressure on his own party to deliver legislative victories that voters had expected when they elected Republicans to control both houses of Congress.

“They’re [voters] not as unhappy with the president as the American people are unhappy with this Republican Congress,” Huckabee said. “There is outrage for not being able to deliver to a president. I think there’s an extraordinary exasperation on the part of the public.”

Democrats were exultant at the deal. Senate Minority leader Chuck Schumer called it a “positive step forward” that would avoid default and quickly get money to hurricane victims in Texas and Louisiana. “The nation can breathe a sigh of relief,” Schumer tweeted.

White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders issued a statement confirming that Trump had held early morning conversations Thursday with senators McConnell and Schumer, as well as Speaker Ryan and Minority Leader Pelosi.

“The President is committed to working across the aisle and doing what is needed to best serve the American people,” Sanders said.

Presidential scholar Dan Mahaffee of the Center for the Study of the Presidency and Congress said Trump’s decision to work with Congressional Democrats had “kicked a hornet’s nest.”

“It reflects the outcome of eight months of frustration for President Trump in working with Congress and the GOP Congressional Leadership,” Mahaffee said. “Trump is now feeling out what deals might be made with Democrats, and how that might be able to make up for the GOP’s inability to find consensus on important policy goals."

Trump’s newly chummy relationship with Democrats appeared to take another twist Thursday when he issued a tweet advising those affected by the end of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, that they have nothing to worry about. Pelosi told reporters she had asked Trump to issue the tweet.

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