A uniquely toxic figure: Donald Trump faces extra hurdles as Congress returns

Congress returns Tuesday to grapple with the debt limit, tax reform, government funding to avoid a shutdown, recovery efforts – and a hostile leader

He has gone from The Art of the Deal to How to Lose Friends and Alienate People. Donald Trump, increasingly isolated in the White House, faces a daunting task to get his presidency back on track when Congress returns on Tuesday from a summer ending all too soon.

Senators and Representatives could be forgiven for dragging their feet with a gloomy back-to-school air as they grapple with the debt limit, major tax reform, government funding to avoid a shutdown and, most urgently, recovery efforts after Hurricane Harvey in Texas.

The hurricane has handed Trump a random, unexpected opportunity-in-a-crisis. It deflected attention from his host of troubles in Washington, including the fallout of his controversial remarks about white supremacists in Charlottesville, Virginia. It also presented him with a moment he appeared to relish, a chance to play the man of action, the authority figure before a cheering crowd, taking on a foe that matched his own “yuge” sense of scale.

But the coming week puts him back somewhere he is far less comfortable: behind a desk, haggling over policy, juggling egos, playing politics, dealing with details and trying to do what he has not managed in seven months by getting some significant legislation passed. And he must do so in the teeth of a hostile headwind of his own making.

Trump has united Democrats and activists in opposition, burned bridges with many Republicans, lost some White House allies, such as chief strategist Steve Bannon, and angered others, such as chief economic adviser Gary Cohn, strained relations with cabinet members, including attorney general Jeff Sessions and secretary of state Rex Tillerson, clashed with the judiciary, squandered goodwill in the business community – he was forced to abandon three advisory panels as CEOs fled – and provoked a fierce backlash from many in the media, Hollywood and Silicon Valley. No man is an island, but the US president has become a uniquely toxic figure.

“Trump’s residual support among his base is the only prop holding him up in Washington, where he demonstrated no competence and no strength in governing,” said Sidney Blumenthal, a former senior adviser to Bill Clinton. “He is seen by the Republican leadership as a profoundly destructive factor they haven’t figured out how to contain.

“For the Congressional Republican leadership, Trump is their North Korea.”

Pressing fiscal deadlines

The stakes are high in what Bannon, former White House chief strategist, reportedly referred to as “meat-grinder” month. Congress must raise the debt limit by 29 September, a move that enables the US to continue paying its bills, as well as pass a new spending bill by 30 September to avert a shutdown of the federal government.

The devastating aftermath of Harvey also poses a new challenge, with Trump vowing “rapid action from Congress” to send emergency relief funding toward flood-ravaged areas in Texas.

Lingering resentment between fiscal hawks and moderate Republicans from the 2012 funding battle over Hurricane Sandy rose to the surface in recent days, serving as a reminder that even the passage of emergency response legislation is no easy feat. Estimates for a Hurricane Harvey package are already exceeding $100bn, a price tag that could prompt objections from hardline conservatives.

Texas Senator Ted Cruz was among those who opposed a $50bn Hurricane Sandy relief bill, a vote that has come back to haunt him now that his home state has suffered its own catastrophe. Several members of the Texas delegation also voted against Hurricane Sandy aid in the House of Representatives.

Republicans in Congress have signalled that Hurricane Harvey relief could be doled out in stages, as opposed to a standalone package, over the course of months. They might also attach emergency money to one of the other must-pass bills, such the legislation to fund the government or increase the debt ceiling, thus making it more difficult for members to oppose.

Even as the White House and congressional leaders agree the pressing fiscal deadlines must be met, differences over political priorities have raised the spectre of a showdown ahead.

The wall and government shutdown

Trump has insisted that a government funding bill include money for his promised wall along the US-Mexico border, a nonstarter with Democrats whose votes would be necessary to avoid a shutdown.

“I hope that’s not necessary,” Trump said this week of a possible government shutdown over the wall. “If it’s necessary, we’ll have to see … The wall is needed from the standpoint of security.”

House speaker Paul Ryan pushed back on the idea of shutting down the government over the border wall. But administration officials have refused to back away from the president’s threat to stake government operations on funding for what was arguably his most signature campaign promise.

“The president’s very much committed to building the wall,” White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders told reporters Friday when asked if Trump was willing to take a shutdown over the wall off the table.

S&P Global economists have warned of dire consequences should Congress trigger a government shutdown, with a potential cost to the US of at least $6.5bn a week.

Frank Luntz, a Republican consultant and pollster, said: “There is so much that needs to get done and it hasn’t been a good August for anybody. The will is there but we’ll have to see if there’s a way. The failures to pass healthcare and tax reform are the ingredients of a disaster next November [in the 2018 midterm elections] but it’s amazing what you can do when you’re staring defeat in the face.”

Trump outlined a broad vision for tax reform in a speech in Missouri on Wednesday, putting the onus on Congress to hash out the specifics and send a comprehensive bill to his desk.

Deeming it a “once-in-a-generation opportunity”, Trump said he was “fully committed” to working with Congress to lower tax rates and boost wages, even as he somewhat ominously warned: “I don’t want to be disappointed by Congress. Do you understand me?”

The approach was reminiscent of Trump’s involvement in this year’s healthcare debate, when the president used the bully pulpit to demand that Republicans repeal and replace Obamacare but kept a distance from the policy details and deal-making.

Trump subsequently blamed Republicans, taking unusually public aim at McConnell, for the failure to dismantle Barack Obama’s healthcare law. He also attacked Arizona senators John McCain and Jeff Flake, the latter ranking among the more vulnerable incumbents facing reelection in 2018.

Blumenthal, also an author and biographer of Abraham Lincoln, said: “Mitch McConnell has to be able to discipline his unruly Senate which has so far been unable to achieve passage of any meaningful legislation. Trump is a major obstacle to him and threatens to force a crisis.

“Trump has decided McConnell is his enemy and is positioning himself against McConnell and Congressional Republicans in order to blame them for his own spectacular incapacity to govern. It’s a deliberate strategy on Trump’s part and McConnell is aware of it. It will figure into how events work out in the coming months.”

A divided party

Trump does still have one ally: his core populist support, as evidenced by his regular rallies where the enthusiasm remains palpable. Blumenthal added: “Trump still holds his base which is still a majority of the Republican party and because of that he’s able to terrorise Congressional Republicans. The consequences are that he’s further destabilizing the party.”

Trump’s comments on Charlottesville, where he blamed “both sides” for violence, and his controversial pardon of Sheriff Joe Arpaio earned a double dose of criticism from Ryan. Hurricane Harvey did, at least, give him a chance to strike a note of unity. He was lavished with praise by the Republican governor of Texas, Greg Abbott, although he could not resist some classic Trumpisms such as, “What a crowd, what a turnout,” as he waved the state flag.

Michael Steel, a former aide to retired GOP House speaker John Boehner, said Trump’s relationship with Republicans in Congress “is probably never going to be completely smooth”.

But the president’s remarks on tax reform were far more in line with the needs of Republicans on Capitol Hill. “Congressional Republicans don’t need the president diving into the nitty gritty of this percentage versus that percentage or this deduction versus that deduction,” Steel said. “They need is for him to make a big, broad base case for the importance of tax reform.”

Among the lessons learned from healthcare, he added, was “the importance of having the president engaged leading up to the vote and out campaigning across the country for these policy changes and their benefits.”

Although Steel acknowledged Trump remained an unpredictable leader, overhauling the nation’s tax code had been a priority for Republicans and one they were capable of steering on their own. “Congressional leaders are totally dedicated to getting something done on this,” he said. “Tweets or taunts from the president are not going to deter them.”

Lanhee Chen, a research fellow at the Hoover Institution in Stanford, California, agreed: “It’s going to be a tough slog to get through but when it comes to working together, they will do it and it will be all right. It’s fair to say the president is isolated in a lot of ways but the pull of partisanship is still a strong one.”

Divisions in the Republican party have always been there and should not be pinned on Trump alone, he added. “Healthcare expressed the sincere policy differences between Republicans and exposed the delicate coalition that is the modern Republican party. As Paul Ryan said, governing is difficult.”

This may be little consolation to Trump as he broods on his self-inflicted wounds and the potential endgame. If Democrats take the House in 2018 and move to impeach him, perhaps in the wake of special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into alleged collusion with Russia, Trump will need to hope that McConnell is forgiving enough to save his skin in the Senate.

Seldom has a president done so much, so quickly, to cause such widespread animosity. His only potential rival, perhaps, is British journalist Toby Young, who in his memoir How to Lose Friends and Alienate People chronicled his comical failure to take the Manhattan media world by storm at Vanity Fair magazine.

Young, however, thinks not. “I don’t think our two situations are comparable,” he wrote in an email. “I made a few inappropriate jokes and took the Mickey out of the wrong people and, as a result, cut short my career as a glossy magazine journalist in New York. Trump might well destroy western civilisation.”