A Republican senator expressed his dissatisfaction to Susie Wiles, the rookie White House chief of staff.
“I texted you three days ago,” the lawmaker said.
Wiles, who ran Donald Trump’s campaign, said she understood and would respond, without sounding like she was in a rush.
There is little doubt that her phone must be flooded with messages from people wanting a job – or influence – in the new Trump administration.
Backstage jockeying ahead of Trump’s second presidency could shed light on the legislative and administrative battles the next White House will face. (Getty Images)
But the bickering sheds light on a dilemma Trump may face in a city he controls, where both houses of Congress are under Republican control (and where Kamala Harris stood up yesterday, four years after the Capitol insurrection peacefully ratified the transfer of power).
The downside of virtually unlimited influence is that if something goes wrong, there is no one else to blame.
And then there’s the black hole known as Congress. After towing Mike Johnson If he crosses the finish line in the election for president, even calling from his golf course, Trump now faces a dilemma after the debt ceiling fight over Christmas, which just postponed the budget fight until March.
Using a process known as reconciliation, which lowers the threshold from 60 votes in the Senate to 51 — both parties have used this for party-line dominance — Trump favors “one big beautiful bill.” That would include budget cuts, energy sector deregulation, tax cuts, border crackdowns and other presidential priorities.
But many on the Hill support two separate bills, and some in Trump World believe Congress simply doesn’t have the bandwidth to take the kitchen sink approach.
So the big, beautiful bill might not pass until June, depriving the 47th president of an early victory.
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Johnson will have just a one-vote margin, making it difficult for him to make the deep cuts that hardliners want, following the battle that has toppled. Kevin McCarthy.
In the meantime, the Department of Homeland Security would struggle to mount a major initiative because it, like other agencies, is working with the emergency budget that the government nearly shut down over Christmas.
The risk of introducing two bills is that once the first bill passes, the momentum for passing a second measure could disappear, even if it includes Trump priorities like tax cuts.
House Speaker Mike Johnson’s one-vote majority leaves him little room for error in his efforts to rally his caucus around the new president’s agenda. (Valerie Plesch)
Trump hedged his bets yesterday, telling radio host Hugh Hewitt: “I would prefer it, but… I’m open to either side as long as we get something through as quickly as possible.”
Washington is a city obsessed with titles and perceived influence, and that will influence how the White House is run.
Wiles has helped demote a number of jobs that have always had the titles of Assistant to the President to Deputy Assistant to the President – something that no right-thinking outsider would care about, but which is a big deal to the insiders is. That’s because after the assistant job limit was reached, the only alternative was to create some deputies.
For her part, Wiles told Axios: “I do not welcome people who want to work solo or become a star… My team and I do not tolerate slander, inappropriate second-guessing or drama. These are counterproductive to the mission.” .”
Karoline Leavitt, the new press secretary, is also deprived of the large office used by her predecessors for at least thirty years. That goes to another communications employee.
I remember being in that office on the second floor when Mike McCurry was press secretary, and… Bill Clinton popping in and chatting while I worked on my book ‘Spin Cycle’. The reason for the large office was the press conversations and sometimes interviews, which most small offices in the West Wing could not accommodate.
Anyone in Wiles’ sensitive position would invariably upset some officials during a process of determining winners and losers. But Trump views her as a grandmother and does not yell at her as he would at other officials over a disagreement.
As for Elon Musk’s powerful role, Trump enjoys the company of rich people, and the X owner is the richest person in the world. So he has influence until he doesn’t, if a future argument arises.
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Plus, it’ll be harder for Musk to stick around once Trump moves from Mar-a-Lago to the White House, unless he wants to give Elon the Lincoln bedroom.
For the time being, the transition is organized chaos. But as Trump knows all too well, having done this job before, when a terrorist attack or a border incident or rising food prices loom, he owns it.
Meanwhile with Kamala Harris Routinely confirming her own defeat yesterday – with live coverage given the history of January 6 – Donald Trump posted this:
Trump has made no secret of his feelings about Team Biden’s handling of the presidential transition. (Getty/AP)
“Biden is doing everything he can to make the TRANSITION as difficult as possible, from legal matters the likes of which have never been seen before, to costly and ridiculous Executive Orders on the Green New Scam and other money-wasting Hoaxes. Fear not, these ‘Orders’ will all soon be ended, and we will become a nation of sanity and strength!!!”
Is that worse than what happened? January 6, 202?
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It’s true that the outgoing president has issued orders, among other things, to halt oil exploration along 625 million hectares offshore, but there’s no reason why the “drill, baby, drill” president can’t reverse that, although it does give him could delay.
Harris gave a short speech yesterday about the peaceful transfer of power, and Biden argued in a Washington Post op-ed that we should never forget what happened on that dark day.
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Whoever you agree with, I think it’s fair to say that this issue was raised during the election, and Americans voted to put Trump back in the White House, knowing what happened during the televised riot happened.
