Tweeting against the House Freedom Caucus? Really?
Donald Trump’s latest antagonistic tweet — the product of a compulsive habit that somehow seems to become more unpresidential with each passing day — was perhaps his biggest misfire yet, as it has put him at loggerheads with the Freedom Caucus (HFC), the faction in the House most instinctively inclined to take his side in legislative battles.
Starting the news day off with a bang, the president tweeted: “The Freedom Caucus will hurt the entire Republican agenda if they don’t get on the team, & fast. We must fight them, & Dems, in 2018!”
Yesterday evening, he went on to tweet at specific members of the Freedom Caucus over their lack of cooperation on health care.
These tweets were tantamount to shooting himself, and his party, in the foot. Not that this should come as a surprise; Trump has never given much reason to believe that he has any qualms about intentionally goading members of his own party. Throughout the primary campaign and into the general election, Trump repeatedly threatened to foster primary challenges against GOP politicians vying for the nomination, and against those who refused to bend the knee to him after the convention.
Yesterday morning’s tweet was yet another indication that Trump doesn’t understand the importance of coalition-building, or perhaps even that he believes his incredible “deal-making” skills will somehow compensate for the loss of Freedom Caucus votes. Without the 35 official members of the HFC, the House GOP has just 216 representatives, two fewer than what’s needed to pass a bill without any Democratic support. It would be a mistake for the president to believe that his legislative agenda — to the extent that he has one at all — will benefit from such open attacks against a crucial subset of his own party.
What’s more, this belligerence toward the HFC has put the president on a collision course with the people representing his most ardent supporters. By and large, Freedom Caucus members come from districts Trump dominated in November. Though there is reason to believe the most passionate Trump voters will side with him in any political conflict, even within the GOP, it is unwise for him to set himself against the very politicians who give voice to the populist wave that swept him into office. (It is worth noting that nearly all of the HFC members outperformed Trump in their districts in November.)
This tweet has also presented a dilemma for hardline-conservative talking heads and outlets that have always hailed Freedom Caucus–style Republicans as the saving grace of the party. Talk-radio hosts such as Sean Hannity and outlets such as Breitbart News have always sided with HFC members whenever they bucked GOP leadership on the grounds of conservative principle. These same pundits glommed onto Trump for the same reason: He presented himself as a bold outsider ready to go toe to toe with the dreaded “establishment.”
But now, Trump is the establishment, the most powerful GOP politician in the entire country, and so far, he has shown himself largely unable to transition away from “outsider” mode to uniting his party around a common governing vision. Hence, tweets such as this one. He continues casting about for new enemies in order to maintain his status as an outsider, but, as he did in this case, he often sets his sights on the wrong one.
The battle over the American Health Care Act (AHCA) — which presumably prompted this tweet — was a perfect example of Trump’s inability to unite factions either across the aisle or within the GOP. Despite his braggadocio, he’s not much of a negotiator, largely because, at least on this subject, he’s completely ignorant of the policies he’s attempting to negotiate. He was quick to tire of flexing his famed deal-making muscles and to throw in the towel on the AHCA because it wasn’t his legislation to begin with. As recently as the first GOP primary debate in August 2015, Trump was praising single-payer health-care systems. Since then, he has yet to demonstrate any grasp of health-care policy or a concrete plan for fixing Obamacare — he just knows it’s “a disaster” that he wants to replace with “something great” that will “take care of everybody.”
Aside from revealing his lack of commitment to health-care reform, his unwise attack on the Freedom Caucus has forced right-wing Trump defenders to concoct an untenable narrative in which the president doesn’t actually want to oppose the HFC but rather is being held captive by sinister establishment forces.
For instance, HFC member Dave Brat — who successfully primaried the sitting House majority leader in 2014 – said of the president yesterday, “I don’t know who has his ear. . . . I don’t think he is hearing that we are trying to serve him a victory — right? — Right now, this bill is at 17 percent in the polls, and that’s not a winner.”
This meshes with the argument made by right-wing analysts just after the AHCA was pulled from the House floor last Friday afternoon: Trump was deceived by Speaker Paul Ryan. Breitbart was quick to label the failed bill “Ryancare.” Some even tried to spin the health-care debacle as yet another win in Trump’s unfailing master plan.
These responses reveal better than anything else why Trump was so foolish to lash out at the Freedom Caucus — they and their longtime allies in the media are his most natural supporters. And if the AHCA debacle is any indication, he’s going to need all the support he can get.
Editor’s Note: This article has been amended since its original publication.
– Alexandra DeSanctis is a National Review Institute William F. Buckley Fellow in Political Journalism.
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