(L-R) Jared Kushner, Steve Bannon, Reince Priebus. Not pictured: what theyre holding in their left hands. Photo: Mandel Ngan/AFP/Getty Images
In the wake of their failure to repeal Obamacare, Republicans have quickly pivoted to their next priority: maneuvering to pin the blame on each other for the failure. Some of the infighting has pitted Republicans in the Executive branch against those in the House. Some of it has pitted White House aides against each other. What follows is a guide to the latest developments in the partys fratricidal conflict.
President Trump wishes he didnt try to pass health-care reform before he tried infrastructure and tax cuts. According to CNN, Trump said he expressed regret at attempting to push through a health-care repeal effort before working on tax reform or an infrastructure package both areas in which hes better versed than health care. (Trump does not actually understand infrastructure policy or tax policy well at all, but he believes he does, which is not the case with health-care reform.)
Trump is trying to pass health-care reform anyway. The White House held a meeting last night with House leaders pressing upon them the need to pass a bill quickly. A House aide said Pence and other White House officials painted a dire political picture of what would happen if Republicans fail to act on health care, reports the Washington Post, which describes the meeting as intense.
Politico goes farther. It was really bad, one source says.They were in total meltdown, total chaos mode. Priebus may or may not have threatened Ryans job if the bill fails:
Priebus may get fired. One reason for the intensity of the meeting may be that Priebus himself is at risk of being sacked if the health-care bill does not pass. According to several people familiar with Trumps thinking, reports CNN, if this latest health-care gambit fails, Priebus is likely to catch the blame and could be shown the door.
Trump is also angry at Steve Bannon. The chief strategist urged Trump to ram a bill through the House and dare members to oppose it, eventually culminating in a humiliating retreat. Bannons demotion from his position on the National Security Council is universally seen as a public rebuke by the president.
Bannon is fighting back against his internal enemies. Bannon has lashed out at Jared Kushner and Gary Cohn, his internal rivals for Trumps ear. Bannon is calling Cohn Globalist Gary, according to CNN, an apparent reference to Cohns background at Goldman Sachs. (Bannon also worked at Goldman Sachs, but sees himself as less of a rootless cosmopolitan international-banking elitist.)
Jonathan Swan reports, the hatred between the two wings is intense and irreconcilable, and that the Bannonites believe the liberals another Bannonite term for the conventional Republicans advising Trump, who are not liberal staged a coup and will turn Trump into a conventional squish who betrays the very voters who brought him to power. The Jared wing thinks the Bannonites are clinically nuts. Evidence suggests both sides are correct.
[Steve] recently vented to us about Jared being a globalist and a cuckHe actually said cuck, as in cuckservative, one administration official told the Daily Beast. (Cuckservative is an alt-right term, derived from cuckolding, to impugn mainstream conservatives as metaphorically or sexually impotent. The term also refers to the white-supremacist fixation with the white race losing its identity through miscegenation.)
According to Swan, Bannon is threatening to use his connections to right-wing media moguls to attack his adversaries. Steve has developed strong and important relationships with some of the most powerful right-leaning business leaders, a close Bannon ally outside of the White House tells Swan. I see some bad press in [Jareds] future.
The civil war is percolating down through the bureaucracy. According to another Politico story, many or even most agencies are riven with conflicts between Trump loyalists, who expected high positions in the administration, and regular Republicans, who have largely supplanted them.
There are people who moved here and signed a year lease, one longtime campaign staffer tells Politico. They got nothing for their loyalty to Trump. Were pissed off. Were angry. There are people who cant even look us in the eye because they know theyre [screwing] us.
The actual reasons for the failure of the health-care bill boil down to two things: first, the irreconcilable tension between public desire for more generous coverage and conservative demands for less, and the complete policy ignorance of the president, which made intra-party negotiation prohibitively difficult.
Obviously, those are not explanations Trump wants to hear. At the moment, he appears to be leaning toward the answers supplied to him by Kushner and Cohn. Bannon is reportedly telling people, I love a gunfight. But you dont bring a gun to the Night of the Long Knives.
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The House district represented by Mike Pompeo looked unassailable just days ago. No more.
It has not been successful or 13 weeks.
The president is reportedly weighing military action in Syria.
Its been tried, and it didnt work the first time.
The Trump administration has assembled a long list of popular, left-wing policies that it has shown no intention of actually trying to pass.
Its the Night of the Long Knives for the fine-tuned machine.
The long-awaited GOP move to force confirmation of Neil Gorsuch and future nominees by a simple majority has finally happened.
The boats dont yet have names, so the citys second-graders are tasked with picking them.
And in the process, ensures its published on news sites across the world.
Nunes will leave the gig to spend more time defending himself against ethics charges.
The presidents eldest son says the politics bug bit him.
To prepare for his meeting with Xi Jinping, Trump is relying on the expertise of his son-in-law, an oil executive, and a 93-year-old man.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights calls it ISISs largest mass killing of 2017.
It hurt the Democrats in the short run. But new polling confirms that the ACA gave the left a permanent advantage in the health-care debate.
Hes been clashing with Jared Kushner, and the President Bannon meme is said to be getting to Trump.
Making evidence-free accusations has worked out pretty well for him, so he probably wont.
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Republicans Tearing Each Other to Pieces Over Trumpcare Debacle - New York Magazine