President Trump vows to fight far-right caucus if it doesn’t come on board.
WASHINGTON — President Trump effectively declared war Thursday on the House Freedom Caucus, the powerful group of hard-line conservative Republicans who blocked the health care bill, vowing to “fight them” in the 2018 midterm elections.
In a morning tweet, Trump warned that the Freedom Caucus would “hurt the entire Republican agenda if they don’t get on the team, & fast.” He grouped its members, all of them Republican, with Democrats in calling for their political defeat — an extraordinary incitement of intraparty combat from a sitting president.
There are about three dozen members of the Freedom Caucus, and most of them were elected or re-elected comfortably in solidly Republican districts. With his tweet, Trump seemed to be encouraging primary challenges to each of them in next year’s elections. Asked to elaborate on Trump’s threat, the White House had no immediate comment.
“Nothing to add at this time,” White House spokeswoman Sarah Huckabee Sanders said. “The president’s tweet speaks for itself.”
Trump and his White House advisers have been frustrated by the intransigence of Freedom Caucus members, led by Rep. Mark Meadows, R-N.C. Trump lobbied them intensively to support the GOP plan to replace former President Barack Obama’s signature Affordable Care Act, only to see the bill collapse last Friday after Meadows and his allies said they would not vote for it.
Trump’s threat comes as Republican leaders are bracing for a month of potential GOP infighting over spending priorities. Congress must pass a spending bill by April 28 to avert a government shutdown, but the path ahead, as in recent spending battles on Capitol Hill, is narrow and filled with obstacles.
Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, a Freedom Caucus member, said the break with Trump on the health care legislation was based on real policy differences, not a lack of loyalty.