Amy Walter and Jasmine Wright on Trump's control of GOP lawmakers

Amna Nawaz:

For more on the relationship between the White House and Republicans in Congress, I'm joined by our Politics Monday duo. That is Amy Walter of The Cook Political Report With Amy Walter and Jasmine Wright, White House correspondent for NOTUS. Tamara Keith is away this evening.

Jaz, great to have you here. Nice to see you.

Jasmine Wright, NOTUS:

Thank you.

Amna Nawaz:

Let's pick up where Lisa left off there.

Amy, this idea that Congress has been ceding its power over the years, she tracked that in the report. We now have a president who's willing to push and exert authority in ways previous presidents have not. What does that mean for lawmakers who want their power back?

Amy Walter, The Cook Political Report:

Right.

Well, some of it is, I think we have to step back for a minute and say for Republicans in Congress -- obviously, Republicans control the House and the Senate -- they actually are supportive of what the president's doing because the base Republican Party voters remain very supportive of the president pretty much down the line.

Overwhelmingly, they supported the job that he's doing in office. There was a Quinnipiac poll out just the other week; 89 percent of Republicans approve the job he's doing as commander in chief. They like what he's doing in Venezuela.

And remember 80 percent of those who sit in Congress who are Republicans in Congress sit in districts that Trump won by 10 points or more. In other words, most Republicans sit in Trump districts and those voters in those districts like what Trump's doing. So the idea of pushing back doesn't make much sense to them because the people in their districts are pretty happy -- at least the Republicans are -- with what he's doing.

Amna Nawaz:

Jaz, when you mark one year of Trump's second term, what's the relationship between Congress and Trump here?

Jasmine Wright:

Well, if you ask the White House officials, they say the relationship is very good, that President Trump is calling lawmakers, specifically Republican lawmakers.

Over the last week, we have heard him call a Democratic senator, Elizabeth Warren, so he's willing to pick up the phone. But, frankly, this White House and the president views the Congress as not a co-governing body, as some would say the Constitution stipulates, but a body put in place to further the president's agenda when need be.

Obviously, we have seen him coalesce a lot of power in the executive, trying to expand that. And so they don't really see the need for Congress in the traditional sense. And they say, basically, you go along with it or you get lost. So those small handful of lawmakers on both the House and Senate side, Republican side, who don't want to go along with it, he's basically bullying them, trouncing them, arguing that he's going to primary them.

So I think that the totality of this is that you're not seeing a lot of pushback because the president has a firm grasp on his party, even though they may not like individual things that he's doing.

Amy Walter:

Yes.

Amna Nawaz:

Yes.

Amy Walter:

And when I talk to folks who cover Congress, one of them said to me, look, Republicans are willing to push back much more on Mike Johnson, the speaker, than they are willing to push back on the White House.

Amna Nawaz:

Yes.

Amy Walter:

So where you're seeing sort of defections, it's against the speaker of the House, who they don't fear as much as they fear Trump.

Amna Nawaz:

Well, Jaz, as you point out, we have seen the president, in your words, bully them or primary, threaten to primary Republicans who speak out against him.

There was another example of that over the weekend, when Donald Trump posted this on TRUTH Social about Louisiana Senator Bill Cassidy, essentially. He's endorsing a Louisiana congresswoman, Julia Letlow, on a possible Senate run. She hasn't even said she's running. He's encouraging her to, in his word, "Run, Julia, run."

This would be against the sitting GOP Senator, Amy, Bill Cassidy, who has occasionally criticized Trump. Is this meant to keep Senate Republicans in line?

Amy Walter:

yes.

Most importantly, it's not just that he's criticized Trump. He voted to impeach Donald Trump. And so...

Amna Nawaz:

In his second impeachment, yes.

Amy Walter:

The second impeachment, yes.

And so even as Kennedy has sought Trump's approval, sought Trump's stamp of...

Amna Nawaz:

Cassidy, yes.

Amy Walter:

Cassidy. I'm sorry. Cassidy has sought his approval and has sought support. He was, of course, the deciding vote in the Senate to confirm RFK Jr., even as he had many concerns, Cassidy did, about RFK Jr. and what he was going to do with vaccines.

At the end of the day, it really comes down to this. The president has a very long memory. And he believes if you have crossed him -- and, in this case, this is the greatest sin, is that you voted to impeach him. There's not much you can do to win back his favor.

Jasmine Wright:

And, to be clear, we have reporting on NOTUS that folks like John Thune, Senate majority leader...

Amy Walter:

Yes.

Jasmine Wright:

... called Trump to try to basically get him to back down on wanting to primary Bill Cassidy, just because the numbers are already looking a little bit shaky for folks.

So this was kind of a full-court press on trying to get President Trump to back down and he didn't. And the fact that he didn't is supportive of this idea that he utilizes the threat of primaries in a way that no other modern president did.

And I think back to the last president, former President Joe Biden, when he consistently ran into a problem with Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema, two members who are not in the Senate anymore, but consistently ran into a problem with them not wanting to effectuate his agenda. And did he call for them to be primaried?

No. But you're seeing Donald Trump do it time and time again, and you are seeing the Republican Party for the most part fall in line.

Amy Walter:

Yes.

Amna Nawaz:

You're also seeing the Republican Party for the most part try to explain some of the actions we see from the president. We're seeing some of it now. We will see more of it.

And I want to put to you some of the reporting Nick Schifrin broke over the weekend, which was this note that Donald Trump sent to European officials basically laying bare the reason or one of the reasons that he wants to try to take over Greenland is because Denmark would not give him the Nobel Peace Prize.

It doesn't get any more clear than that. Amy, how do lawmakers explain that, you think?

Amy Walter:

Right.

Well, we will start to get more of them on the record. And most of them, I'm sure, are going to say things like, well, he says stuff like this all the time. He doesn't really mean it. Does it really mean anything?

Amna Nawaz:

I didn't read it.

Amy Walter:

Right.

The question really is where things go from here. And this is what -- I started this conversation by saying, look, where the Republican base is, is pretty consistent with where Trump is, or they like where Donald Trump is going. Where they do draw a line, at least in the polling that we're seeing, is on this idea of either invading Venezuela or putting boots on the ground in Greenland.

They like the idea in polling, Republicans do, of, yes, let's buy Greenland, but they don't like the idea of taking military action. And that's where I think you can push and push and push of this, Trump can, and still get support from his party. Starting to talk about troop movements, that's a different story.

Amna Nawaz:

I want to correct myself. I said Denmark when I meant Norway, but please, Jasmine.

Jasmine Wright:

Yes, great reporting there from Nick.

I mean, I think just fundamentally, this is not a new thing for the president. We know that he talked about this in his first term. But the difference here is who he has around him. Right now, he has people around him who are willing to trust in him more, who are willing to let him do more, who are willing to push back on him less than I think the folks in the first term.

And you know that is true because Donald Trump has said repeatedly, I like this group of people I have around me more than I did the last ones, even save for a couple of different members.

And so I think that you're not seeing the pushback from the White House that maybe people in the Republican Party thought that you would see when you're coming to this idea of we're going to invade Greenland or we're going to put boots on the ground in Venezuela, something that President Trump has ruled out, the Venezuela part.

And so I think that you're not necessarily going to see a lot of direct pushback to him, but you may see pushback to Speaker Mike Johnson or you may see pushback to John Thune. The question is, how far does that go? And, of course, the whole big picture of NATO and where does that play in is obviously another question mark.

Amna Nawaz:

A lot of big question marks. We will be talking about this a lot more.

(Crosstalk)

Amna Nawaz:

Jasmine Wright of NOTUS, great to have you here this week. Thanks for being here. Amy Walter, always great to see you both. Thank you.

Amy Walter:

Thank you so much.