USA TODAY International Edition
Trump gets new allies in Senate
President helped them; they’re ready to help him
WASHINGTON – President Donald Trump’s cavalry is coming to Washington.
With the election of six new Republicans this month and a runoff victory Tuesday for staunch Trump ally Cindy Hyde-Smith of Mississippi, the U.S. Senate will now be more pro-Trump than ever.
In 2016, many Republicans had hoped to win despite Trump, rather than because of him. In 2018, it was Trump’s endorsement and repeated rallies in their states that helped propel GOP candidates to victory.
Now lawmakers owe him and will be eager to champion the president’s agenda. Depending on the outcome of Robert Mueller’s Russia probe, they might even provide a bulwark protecting Trump from impeachment.
“These are the individuals who embraced the Trump agenda, ran with Trump and had unwavering support,” Trump’s former campaign manager and current adviser Corey Lewandowski told USA TODAY. “That is going to translate when they get to Washington to help Trump be successful.”
Some examples:
❚ North Dakota Sen.-elect Kevin Cramer, who had been his state’s sole congressman, was personally recruited by Trump to run for Senate and served as the Trump’s energy adviser during the presidential transition.
❚ Rep. Marsha Blackburn, who will be the first female senator from Tennessee, was a top surrogate during Trump’s campaign.
❚ Incoming Florida Sen. Rick Scott, the state’s current governor, was one of the first prominent Republican politicians in the nation to back Trump’s candidacy in 2016 and has known him for decades.
❚ Indiana businessman Mike Braun and Missouri’s Josh Hawley, the state’s attorney general, unabashedly praised the president on the trail.
❚ Hyde-Smith, who beat Democrat Mike Espy in a runoff election, has strongly supported Trump in the Senate since being appointed this year to fill an open seat. The president defended her after she made “public hanging” remarks many considered racially insensitive.
They were all rewarded during the campaign with frequent visits from the president, Vice President Mike Pence and Trump family members.
“He made my candidacy better just by being connected,” Cramer told USA TODAY on Wednesday.
The GOP also has a wider 53-47 margin after the midterms, thanks to Republicans flipping four Democratic seats while holding onto two open seats. Democrats picked up two GOP seats, giving Republicans an overall two-seat gain.
The incoming group may end up being Trump’s final protection against impeachment. Democrats gained House control with a likely pickup of 40 GOP seats last month. Democrats are expected to open investigations into the president and his administration as soon as they take over committee gavels. That could lead to impeachment proceedings, though Democratic leadership denies it’s their goal.
Kimberly Guilfoyle, a former Fox News host who is now vice chairwoman of a pro-Trump super PAC, said it’s “hugely important” to have allies to provide “strong support” for the president in impeachment proceedings and say “listen, the country doesn’t need this.”
Guilfoyle traveled the country with her boyfriend, the president’s son Donald Trump Jr., in the final weeks campaigning for Republicans, including Cramer, Braun and Scott.
Divided government also means there likely will be showdowns over legislation on immigration, government funding and protections for special counsel Robert Mueller.
Already, Congress is at an impasse over government spending because of Trump’s demand for increased border wall funding. Some of Trump’s judicial nominations have been blocked over unrelated demands to bring up a bill that would protect Mueller. If those fights spill over into the next Congress, new senators will have a say in how to proceed.
Some of the group have echoed the president’s characterization of the Mueller investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election as a “witch hunt.” Cramer said he doesn’t think the president should fire Mueller, but said the investigation has failed to restore confidence in the justice system. This summer, Hawley said the president’s assertion he could pardon himself was “an open question.” And he said he understood why Trump was frustrated with the probe, according to The Kansas City Star.
The Mueller investigation could very well reach a boiling point. On Thursday, Michael Cohen, Trump’s longtime lawyer, pleaded guilty to lying to congressional committees about plans for a Trump Tower in Moscow. Cohen had told lawmakers the discussions on a Russia project ended in January 2016, but his plea agreement with Mueller said the talks actually lasted further into that year.
The wider GOP margin, stacked with Trump allies, could help usher through the president’s picks for the court and administration.
But there is one new Republican senator who worries some Trump allies with his independence.
“I think that Mitt Romney is going to beat horn in the president’ s side ,” Lewandowski said. The former Mass achu WASHINGTON setts governor who ran unsuccessfully for president in 2012 was critical of Trump during the 2016 election, calling him “a phony” and “a fraud.”
Romney and Trump eventually patched things up and he was briefly considered as Trump’s secretary of state. Trump endorsed Romney for his Utah Senate run, but Romney has kept the president at arm’s length.
Trump’s allies may have reason to be concerned. An Associated Press poll out Thursday found that 64 percent of Utah voters wanted to see Romney confront the president. About half of Romney’s supporters wanted Romney to push back on the president.
Democrats worry that replacing some of the most moderate senators in the chamber with Trump allies will make it harder to make deals. “Voters and Americans thought that there was gridlock in the Senate and in Congress before. I think that is only going to get worse,” said Tara McGowan, the head of ACRONYM, a progressive digital startup.
Others say these new members will act like Republicans, not Trump clones.
”A lot of Republican senators in the senate had come to a pretty stable conclusion that they were going to ignore (Trump) on the legislative side, but they were going to defend him,” said Matt Glassman, senior fellow at the Georgetown University Government Affairs Institute.
But defending Trump may have limits, even for some of his strongest supporters. When the president attacked two cable news hosts and said one had been bleeding from a facelift, Blackburn said the tweets were “were a step too far.”
“He made my candidacy better just by being connected.” Kevin Cramer, North Dakota Republican, on President Donald Trump