Trump claims ‘great victory’
President threatens war against Democrats if they adopt probes
WASHINGTON— President Donald Trump offered Wednesday to work across party lines with Democrats who won control of the House in the midterm elections, but threatened to adopt a “warlike posture” and retaliate if they use their new-found power to investigate his financial and political dealings.
In a post-election news conference that veered from conciliation to confrontation, Trump framed the results of the vote on his own terms, calling it “a great victory” because Republicans bolstered their majority in the Senate and insisting that he is almost happier that Democrats won the House because it will be easier to cut bipartisan deals.
“There are many things we can get along on,” Trump said, citing health care, pharmaceutical drug prices, the environment and infrastructure. “I would like to see bipartisanship. I would like to see unity. Maybe not on everything, but I think we have a very good chance of seeing that.”
Yet even as he praised Rep. Nancy Pelosi of California, the House minority leader, and endorsed her bid to regain the speakership, he said he would fight fire with fire if Democrats followed through on their vows to use the subpoena power that will come with being in the majority to demand the release of his tax returns and reopen the chamber’s investigation into any interactions between Trump’s campaign and Russia during the 2016 election.
“They can play that game, but we can play better because we have a thing called the United States Senate and a lot of questionable things were done between leaks of classified information and many other elements that should not have taken place,” he said.
Aggressive oversight by the Democrats, Trump added, would undercut any chance of bipartisan compromises. “If that happens, then we’re going to do the same thing and government comes to a halt and I’m going to blame them,” he said.
Pelosi said she hoped this would be a “new era” and noted that she worked productively with President George W. Bush when Democrats held the House during his last two years in office.
“The fact is we’d like to work together so legislation would be bipartisan,” she said. But Pelosi said Democrats would not curb their aspirations in the interest of compromise. “We’re not going for the lowest common denominator,” she said. “We’re going for the boldest common denominator.”
While he has presented himself as a natural negotiator from his time in real estate, Trump has made almost no deals with opposition Democrats since taking office. Trump had one brief moment of comity with Pelosi and Sen. Chuck Schumer of New York, the Democratic leader, in his first two years when they agreed to a short-term spending deal, but it quickly evaporated amid disagreement over immigration.
One obvious point of contention that will surely arise between the two sides will be the investigation by the special counsel, Robert Mueller, into ties between the Trump campaign and Russia during the 2016 election and obstruction of justice.
During his session with reporters, Trump once again insisted that he had the right to order an end to the investigation.
“I could’ve ended it anytime I wanted,” he said. “I didn’t. There was no collusion. There was no anything.”
But he did not rule it out. “It should end because it’s very bad for our country,” he said.