Trump's 'fall from grace'? President faces political losses on multiple fronts

[0:00] MSNOW's Michael Schnell is on Capitol Hill for us. Susan Glasser is staff writer for The New Yorker. [0:05] Peter Baker, chief White House correspondent for The New York Times and an MSNOW contributor. [0:10] Peter, to me, the simple question is what happened? Trump came into this presidency with momentum. [0:16] He won every battleground state. I mean, is this just a bad week or a couple of weeks for Trump? [0:22] Or are we seeing, you think, a culmination of events and a real sign that his grip is weakening? [0:28] Well, that's the real question, right? We've had multiple times in the last 10 years that he's been on the stage where people thought, aha, this is the moment he begins to fall from grace. [0:38] This is the moment when he begins to lose his grip on power. The Republicans are starting to turn on him, and he's gone too far this time. [0:46] Whether this is the actual time that happens is still up in the air. [0:49] I mean, look how powerfully he won those primaries in recent weeks against John Cornyn, against Bill Cassidy in the Indiana state legislative races. [0:58] He still has a grip on his party's base, and that's important for him. [1:03] He does not have a grip on the general public. Polls make very clear the general public is not very happy with him. [1:09] He is one of the most unpopular presidents at this point that we've seen, and he has lost every general election. [1:15] His party has lost every general election, or at least seen dramatic movement to the Democratic side in terms of votes since then, [1:21] all of which seems a presage, a pretty tough midterm ahead for Republicans. [1:24] So Republicans are looking ahead. [1:26] They're looking ahead because he's not going to be on the ballot. [1:28] They're going to be on the ballot. [1:29] And with these primaries largely over, they're thinking, what do we need to do to survive? [1:33] One thing they need to do to survive, in some cases they believe, [1:36] is take distance from some of the more controversial decisions like the ballroom [1:39] and like this $1.8 billion fund for his allies. [1:44] Which leads to the obvious question, Susan, how much of what Trump has, political power, [1:49] however you rate it, comes from the fact that he has been willing to use the power of the presidency [1:56] in ways we've never seen before? [2:00] Yeah, that's right. [2:00] I mean, part of what Donald Trump has pursued, I would say, in his second term is a sort of like [2:05] stop me if you can, catch me if you can approach to expanding the powers of the presidency, [2:13] doing things that seemed unthinkable before. [2:16] You know, right here we are living in Washington. [2:19] One day we woke up and the East Wing of the White House was demolished. [2:23] You know, one day a truck showed up and put Donald Trump's name on the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts. [2:32] And, you know, over time, judges get their say. [2:35] But facts on the ground matter, too. [2:38] And that's what I think Trump learned in his career before he entered politics. [2:43] Now, interestingly, in the Senate right now, you have the short-term consequence of Donald Trump [2:48] going for party loyalty in these primaries at the expense of possibly his party's prospects in November [2:56] because you have a bunch of pissed-off senators who are no longer going to be around except for the next few months. [3:02] And it's fascinating that even with the public climb down on this $1.8 billion fund that his critics, [3:11] including many Republicans, are calling a slush fund, [3:13] what I'm hearing today, listening to Republican senators asked by reporters, [3:18] they're still dubious. [3:19] It shows you how they could have resisted before had they chosen to. [3:24] And that's what's so remarkable. [3:26] You know, they chose to suck up to Trump. [3:28] And in the end, it was never enough for him. [3:30] And here they are after the fact saying, well, gee, you know, that looks like a slush fund. [3:35] That looks corrupt. [3:36] They could have been saying that all along, but they weren't because they feared Trump's power. [3:40] Which brings me to the person who spends all day every day on the Hill, Michael. [3:45] Where does the appetite seem to stand on Capitol Hill right now [3:48] to continue to defend Trump's priorities that clearly are unpopular with a wide swath of the American people? [3:57] Yeah, Chris, that appetite is certainly decreasing. [3:59] Look, we saw the Republican concerns and the pushback for the security funding [4:04] for President Trump's East Wing Ballroom at the end of the day. [4:06] That was stripped from the bill. [4:08] And then we saw in the Senate a war powers resolution to curtail the president's authority in Iran. [4:14] That advanced. [4:15] And in the House, it's on track to be adopted later this week. [4:19] And now we have this anti-weaponization fund. [4:21] And for weeks, we had seen criticism from Republicans, [4:24] both publicly and behind the scenes with Todd Blanche, [4:27] pushing back on it and urging the administration to stand down. [4:31] In the end, the administration said that this was dead [4:33] and that they would follow the DOJ said it would follow the court opinion. [4:38] But as was mentioned, that's not enough for some of these Republicans. [4:41] They want more. [4:42] They don't just trust that the White House has said this is over. [4:45] Some of them want to see legislation, [4:47] law, that prevents this project from ever being resurrected. [4:51] In fact, Brian Fitzpatrick, a moderate Republican in the House, [4:54] he's vowing to force legislation on this. [4:56] And some Republicans are signaling that they could support legislation as well, [5:00] particularly in the Senate. [5:02] Where we are right now is that if Republicans or when Republicans move forward with reconciliation, [5:07] remember, that's the package to approve ICE and Border Patrol funding, [5:11] we're going to enter what's known as a Voterama. [5:13] And that means that senators can introduce as many amendments as they want, [5:17] force votes on them on a number of different topics. [5:20] We've heard from several Democrats, including Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, [5:24] who say they are going to introduce amendment after amendment after amendment [5:27] to try and block this slush fund, this anti-weaponization fund, [5:31] from ever being law and ever being held up. [5:34] Even John Thune has recognized the reality that folks are going to be put on the record on this very soon. [5:39] Take a listen to the Senate Majority Leader. [5:42] I'm sure the Democrats are going to give us an opportunity to vote on lots of different amendment ideas. [5:47] But I think if the administration effectively shuts it down, makes that very, very clear, [5:55] then that to me should answer the question. [6:01] Again, Chris, though, those words from the administration are not enough for a number of these Republicans up here. [6:06] I was speaking to a number of Senate Republicans yesterday, [6:09] asking them about that DOJ statement, saying they would follow the courts. [6:12] They said, well, that's not enough. [6:14] The court order was essentially a two-week pause. [6:16] When I asked them if they'd support any of those amendments to block this from ever becoming law [6:22] and ever being held up, some of them said they would consider it. [6:27] So, Susan, this settlement fund, boy, it seems to be in a different category [6:30] than a lot of stuff that we've seen from Trump, where there has been widespread voter pushback. [6:36] What are you watching for to see if this has to go into a full-on retreat? [6:40] Well, again, you know, it's a test of those Republican senators. [6:46] And do they have the spine or not? [6:47] I saw a couple of them quoted, I guess, coming out of meetings today on Capitol Hill, [6:52] a couple of Republicans, John Curtis, I think it was maybe Tom Tillis, saying, [6:56] well, is it dead or is it only mostly dead? [7:01] And, you know, they want it to be dead. [7:03] The question is, are they willing to stand up and actually make it happen again and again and again? [7:07] Trump has signaled that he's going to push them as far as he possibly can. [7:13] I found it interesting, though, Donald Trump doesn't like to climb down. [7:16] Very interesting that, you know, hours after he made what looked like a public climb down [7:22] on this almost $2 billion fund, here he was escalating on another front, [7:29] which is a totally Trumpian move, and suggesting that he's going to nominate [7:33] the totally unqualified head of federal mortgages to be the new director of national intelligence, [7:40] an escalation, perhaps, to mask a retreat on another front.