The following article by James Hohmann with Breanne Deppisch was posted on the Washington Post website April 28, 2017:
This is how Trump looks out for the people who voted for him
THE BIG IDEA: Donald Trump said yesterday morning that his phone calls with the president of Mexico and the prime minister of Canada persuaded him to not withdraw from NAFTA. In fact, he had already made up his mind to stick with the agreement before either conversation.
It wasn’t pleas from foreign leaders or CEOs that prompted the president to change his mind. It was a map of the United States that apparently proved decisive in the tug-of-war between the populists and the globalists inside the administration.
Newly-sworn-in Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue brought to the Oval Office an illustration of the areas that would be hardest hit if the U.S. pulled out of the compact, particularly in agriculture and manufacturing. It highlighted that many of those who would suffer from a trade war – especially exporters – live in “Trump country,” the counties that voted most overwhelmingly for him last November.
“It shows that I do have a very big farmer base, which is good,” Trump recalled in an interview with The Washington Post last night. “They like Trump, but I like them, and I’m going to help them.”
This was a master stroke by the former governor of Georgia, who clearly understands his new boss’s love for visuals.
“I was all set to terminate,” Trump explained in the Oval Office. “I looked forward to terminating. I was going to do it.” He turned to Jared Kushner, who was standing near his desk, and asked, “Was I ready to terminate NAFTA?” “Yeah,” his son-in-law replied.
That is one of many great details in The Post’s story about Trump’s sudden shift on the issue by Ashley Parker, Philip Rucker, Damian Paletta and Karen DeYoung. (Read the whole thing here.)
Trump had planned to make the dramatic announcement of his intention to withdraw during a prime-time rally on Saturday night in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania – on his 100th day in office, at the heart of a Rust Belt state that delivered him the White House and during the White House Correspondent’s Dinner. His populist advisers had urged him to follow through on what was a central promise of his campaign. Chief strategist Stephen K. Bannon has had the words “NAFTA” and “April 29” written on a white board in his office.
But Trump’s view changed once he thought about the politics differently. This is part of a pattern that has emerged clearly since January. In another interview yesterday, Trump dismissed questions about the split inside his White House between the nationalists and the globalists. “Hey, I’m a nationalist and a globalist,” the president told the Wall Street Journal. “I’m both. And I’m the only one who makes the decision, believe me.”
— Six months after his unexpected victory over Hillary Clinton, the president still brings up the election constantly in public and private settings.
Midway through a third interview yesterday, with Reuters, Trump was talking about Chinese President Xi Jinping when he paused to hand out copies of what he described as the latest figures from the 2016 electoral map. “Here, you can take that, that’s the final map of the numbers,” the Republican said from behind his desk. “It’s pretty good, right? The red is obviously us.” Trump had copies for each of the three Reuters reporters in the room.
The elites told Trump he could never win the presidency. He proved them all wrong. That created a false sense of confidence about his readiness to be commander-in-chief. He thought the people who said he couldn’t change Washington were the same ones who said he couldn’t win the election. He genuinely believed governing would be a lot like campaigning and that he could prove the haters wrong again.
“I thought it would be easier,” Trump admitted to Reuters. “I loved my previous life. I had so many things going. This is more work than in my previous life.”
The president has been refreshingly candid about his political education during various sit-downs with reporters in the run-up to Day 100.
“Making business decisions and buying buildings don’t involve heart,” Trump told Politico for a piece that posted yesterday. “This involves heart. These are heavy decisions.” An unnamed White House official was quoted in the same piece saying, “I kind of pooh-poohed the experience stuff when I first got here. But this sh*t is hard.”
— As Trump tires to find his footing for the next chapter of his presidency, he is increasingly trying to show some deliverables for the coalition that elected him. He wants to reward his base for sticking with him even as his approval rating slipped into the low 40s. Sometimes, in the case of NAFTA, that might require breaking a promise.
One of the most persuasive arguments advisers can make to Trump is that something will benefit his voters. There’s something deeply tribal about it.
Consider one element of the tax reform proposal he rolled out this week. Ending the deduction for state and local taxes, which allows individuals to subtract their home-state levies from their federal taxable income, would disproportionately hurt people who live in blue states and not make much difference for his voters in red states. “That move was a major shift for Mr. Trump, who (as a New Yorker) previously had called for capping deductions but not killing the break,” the Wall Street Journal’s Richard Rubin reports. “It would shift the tax burden from low-tax states such as Texas and Florida to high-tax states such as New York and New Jersey. … Democrats mobilizing to defend the deduction are in the awkward position of standing up for a tax measure that helps some of the highest-income Americans—the same people they typically say don’t pay enough in taxes.”
This reflects a slight shift in the administration’s posture since the failure of the health care bill last month. Trump was stung by all the stories about how the GOP’s proposal would disproportionately hurt people in counties that backed him. He found himself on the defensive in a Fox News interview in mid-March when Tucker Carlson asked about it. “I know that, I know,” Trump lamented. “It’s very preliminary.”
We also saw this dynamic at play with Trump’s demand for money to construct the border wall. As I wrote in Tuesday’s Big Idea, Trump knew he was very unlikely to get what he wanted but he made a show of threatening to shut down the federal government to reassure his core supporters that he’s trying to follow through on what they elected him to do. As he told the Associated Press last Friday, “My base definitely wants the border wall. You’ve been to many of the rallies? The thing they want more than anything is the wall.”
— Trump’s speech this afternoon at the National Rifle Association’s annual meeting in Atlanta is another illustration of how he’s looking to reward his core supporters. He will be the first sitting president to address the convention since Ronald Reagan did more than three decades ago. “The NRA has been a muscular force in American politics for decades. But last year it spent more for Trump than any outside group and began its efforts earlier than in any other presidential cycle,” Tom Hamburger, John Wagner and Rosalind S. Helderman report. “A comparison … of ad spending between 2012 and 2016 found that the gun rights organization spent more than three times as much money to assist Trump as it spent backing … Mitt Romney in 2012, airing 4.5 times as many individual ads.” A very strong case can be made that the president wouldn’t have carried Pennsylvania without NRA air cover.
The group’s big bet paid off. It already got more than its money’s worth when Trump put Neil Gorsuch on the Supreme Court. “The organization also got an early win when Trump signed legislation repealing an Obama administration regulation that sought to block gun purchases by certain people who are unable to administer their own financial affairs,” Tom, John and Ros note. “In the months ahead, the NRA will be looking for Trump to put his weight behind a bill in Congress that would make concealed-carry permits valid in states other than those in which they were issued. Trump endorsed the concept during the campaign, likening it to the portability of driver’s licenses. Also high on the NRA’s agenda is the Hearing Protection Act, which would remove federal registration and identification requirements for those seeking gun silencers. That measure has been touted by the president’s son, Donald Trump Jr., an avid hunter.”
View the post here.