Trump, McConnell strive for harmony
Tensions rise in House, Senate ahead of push to exact tax cuts
WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump and Sen. Mitch McConnell, the Republican leader, tried to convey a sense of harmony Monday after months of bitter private feuding that threatened to undermine their party’s legislative push in the coming weeks to enact a sweeping tax cut.
In an impromptu 45-minute Rose Garden news conference after the men met for lunch at the White House, Trump and McConnell both put on a display of awkward camaraderie, as the president went on volubly, fielding question after question as the senator fidgeted and spoke only occasionally.
Through it all, they tried to wave aside reports of a disintegrating relationship that had included the president’s repeated use of tweets to publicly disparage McConnell’s legislative leadership.
“We have been friends for a long time,” Trump said of McConnell as the veteran lawmaker stood awkwardly to his left. “We are probably now, I think, as least as far as I’m concerned, closer than ever before.”
The expressions of friendship came at a time of deepening personal animosity and mistrust that had left Trump seething about the leader’s legislative failures and McConnell appalled by the president’s lack of policy understanding.
After McConnell publicly questioned the president’s “excessive expectations,” Trump berated him during a phone call that devolved into a profane shouting match, according to a person with knowledge of the call.
The feud peaked this weekend when Stephen Bannon, the president’s former chief strategist, told conservative activists that “up on Capitol Hill, it’s the Ides of March.”
He delivered a blunt message to McConnell: “They’re just looking to find out who is going to be Brutus to your Julius Caesar.”
On Monday, Trump insisted that he has a “fantastic relationship” with Republican members of the Senate, and he praised McConnell’s ability to shepherd the Republican agenda over what he called the nearly complete obstruction of Democrats in the Senate.
The president also said that he will try to talk Bannon out of at least some plans to field hardright primary candidates to challenge virtually every Senate Republican seeking re-election next year.
“The relationship is very good. We are fighting for the same thing,” Trump said during wide-ranging comments that also touched on immigration, health care, the opioid crisis, Cuba, military deaths and other topics. “We are fighting for lower taxes, big tax cuts, the biggest tax cuts in the history of our nation.”
White House officials described Monday’s lunch with McConnell as largely focused on efforts to cut taxes, and they said it ended with both men engaged and relaxed — a remarkable feat for two politicians whose personal styles could not be more different.
Trump has conducted his insurgent presidency in the glare of the cameras, antagonizing friends and foes alike and boasting of accomplishments large and small.
McConnell, the definition of the Washington establishment, has always been a tight-lipped, backroom negotiator.
Despite pledges by both men that they share the same agenda, any good will that may have once existed dissolved after the Senate twice failed to repeal the Affordable Care Act.
But on Monday, both men sought to minimize the conflict between them in the interest of sending a signal of unity of purpose that could soothe the despair of allies who fear the feud imperils any hopes for the tax and budget legislation before the end of the year.