U.S. President Donald Trump in Suffern, N.Y. on Friday. Even a possible end to the Iranian nuclear project doesn’t provide clear sailing for an increasingly embattled Trump, writes David Shribman.Roberto Schmidt/Getty Images
The promise of Middle East peace may remove a contentious issue from the American political scene, but even a possible end to the Iranian nuclear project doesn’t provide clear sailing for an increasingly embattled Donald Trump.
That’s because the announcement of a possible end to the Middle East war came only days after Washington witnessed one of the great laws of U.S. politics in action: that what doesn’t happen in the capital is often more important than what does.
What didn’t happen last week in the Senate: The Republican leadership postponed a vote on a multiyear, US$70-billion immigration-enforcement bill that Mr. Trump dearly wants. The worry was that some GOP members would support an amendment to attack the US$1.8-billion settlement fund Mr. Trump secured from his lawsuit against the IRS that would pay those who claim they have suffered political persecution, including Jan. 6 rioters.
What didn’t happen last week in the House of Representatives: The Republican leadership told members it would not move a bill for a vote on a resolution that would have curtailed Mr. Trump’s military options in Iran. The worry was that some GOP members would support the measure, ensuring its approval.
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Though the apparent peace may remove this issue from legislative action, these actions − or, more precisely, these inactions − are danger signs for a President who just this spring succeeded in purging apostates and opponents in his own party. They are evidence of fresh rumblings of resistance, even restive dissent, among congressional Republicans that a Middle East peace agreement, though universally welcomed, won’t sweep away.
The President’s apparent success in bringing the war to an end may give him a temporary political breather, especially if it brings the swift opening of the Strait of Hormuz and the lowering of energy costs.
But the purges may have actually increased Mr. Trump’s political vulnerability. They freed some lawmakers whose defeat he engineered, or who are retiring from Congress because of uneasiness with his policies and tactics, to transform their passive distaste into active dissension.
The leading example of Trump actions causing Trump trouble: Senator Bill Cassidy, the Louisiana Republican who bent to several of the President’s wishes, including the controversial confirmation of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. as Secretary of Health and Human Services, but still found himself under attack from Mr. Trump and then defeated for re-election by a Trump surrogate.
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Now, armed with the knowledge that he will leave the Senate in early January, he is experiencing a newfound freedom. Mr. Cassidy once opposed efforts to curtail the President’s Iran policies. Now a lame-duck lawmaker but still a moral force in the chamber, he supported limits on presidential war-making power last week. The removal of the war from the congressional agenda hasn’t wiped away Mr. Cassidy’s resentment, nor his resolve to speak freely.
Caveat: After two impeachments, an election defeat, an FBI raid, several lawsuits, multiple complaints of sexual aggression, dozens of indictments and so many miscellaneous moments of political peril that they defy tabulation, Mr. Trump may still be the Mark Twain of his time. In 1897, reacting to press accounts of his demise, the American author cabled from London, “The report of my death is an exaggeration.”
Past reports of Mr. Trump’s impending political doom have similarly been exaggerated − or worse.
More than Grover Cleveland (elected president in 1884, defeated in 1888, elected again in 1892), more than Richard Nixon (defeated for president in 1960, defeated for California governor in 1962, elected president in 1968), Mr. Trump is the reigning comeback king of American political history. Roadblocks have been reduced to speed bumps. Barriers to recovery have been turned into catapults to triumph. Even the startling mugshot of a former president taken in the Fulton County Jail in Atlanta turned out to be a fundraising gambit and is now hanging on a White House wall.
“Maybe this time − maybe − Congress is finally balking at some of what Trump demands,” said Andrew Rudalevige, a professor of government and a presidential scholar at Bowdoin College in Brunswick, Me. “Members have been willing to stomach an awful lot until now, and maybe he’s finally gone too far. It hasn’t helped that he has attacked Republican senators. He’s turning the Republican caucus into free agents as he alienates more and more of them.”
Moved into opposition by his defeat, outraged by the political-persecution fund and alarmed by the Justice Department declaration that U.S. tax officials were “forever barred and precluded” from investigating the Trump family’s tax affairs, Mr. Cassidy said, “Do you really think that the American people like the President suing himself, basically, then making a deal that benefits himself with a broad immunity, for not just for IRS dealings but anything else?”
The Justice Department policy may be a bridge too far for some lawmakers to cross.
Two departing Republican senators, Mitch McConnell of Kentucky (who characterized the action as “a slush fund to pay people who assault cops”) and Thom Tillis of North Carolina (who called it a “payout pot for punks”), suggest that may be the case. Both have earned the ire of Mr. Trump but, by virtue of their retirements, have earned the latitude and liberty to object and oppose.
“What we are seeing in the last few days are some fine fracture lines in the Republican coalition,” said Karlyn Bowman, a conservative public-opinion analyst. “The economy may be the major factor, but this political-persecution fund is making people very uncomfortable. They may just be saying, ‘My gosh, this time he really has gone too far.’ People just want some peace and quiet. They’re absolutely exhausted by politics.”