President Trump on Thursday declared war on a bloc of conservative Republicans — threatening their political futures and blaming them for last week’s embarrassing failure of his health-care plan.
“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!” Trump raged on Twitter about the hard-right group, which wanted a full repeal of ObamaCare and would settle for nothing less.
The caucus last week joined Democrats and many moderate Republicans in opposing Trump’s American Health Care Act, forcing House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) to yank the bill before votes were cast last Friday.
Some caucus members fired back at Trump on Twitter or in comments to reporters.
Rep. Justin Amash (R-Mich.) said Trump’s threat to “fight” conservative members in the 2018 midterm elections makes it clear he has become part of the establishment.
“It didn’t take long for the swamp to drain @realDonaldTrump. No shame, Mr. President. Almost everyone succumbs to the D.C. Establishment,” Amash tweeted.
“Most people don’t take well to being bullied,” Amash said later.
Asked whether Trump’s comments were constructive, Amash offered a withering reply: “It’s constructive in fifth grade. It may allow a child to get his way, but that’s not how our government works.”
Other members also pushed back.
“Nobody wants to be threatened by anybody in politics, whether that’s an irate constituent at a town-hall meeting or whether that happens to be president of the United States,” said Rep. Mark Sanford (R-SC), a former governor.
“As a former chief executive . . . I found that carrots work a lot better than sticks in the world of politics. The idea of threatening your way to legislative success may not, over the long run, prove to be the wisest of strategy.”
Sanford also told The Post and Courier in his home state that Trump dispatched Budget Director Mick Mulvaney, a former caucus member who is also from South Carolina, to deliver a harsh warning before the health bill crashed.
“The president asked me to look you square in the eyes and to say that he hoped that you voted ‘no’ on this bill so he could run [a primary challenger] against you in 2018,” Sanford said Mulvaney informed him.
Rep. Dave Brat (R-Va.), another caucus member, said Trump was getting bad advice to target the caucus.
“Whoever is giving him counsel doesn’t know what’s going on here. We are negotiating like crazy to improve a bill that has 17 percent favorable” ratings in polls, he said.
Trump returned to Twitter later in the day to single out some caucus members, including chairman Mark Meadows of North Carolina and two other leaders:“Where are @RepMarkMeadows, @Jim_Jordan and @Raul_Labrador? #RepealANDReplace #Obamacare.”
“If @RepMarkMeadows, @Jim_Jordan and @Raul_Labrador would get on board we would have both great healthcare and massive tax cuts & reform,” he added.
Trump’s tweets — reportedly adviser Steve Bannon’s idea — followed a meeting Wednesday at the White House between conservative lawmakers and groups and administration officials to try to settle their differences.
The two sides listened to each others’ concerns but reached no deal, Politico reported.
Asked whether Trump was threatening to support primary challenges to caucus members, White House spokesman Sean Spicer said that the president’s tweets speak for themselves but that his ultimate goal was to win enough votes to pass his agenda.
Trump initially blamed Democrats for the defeat of the healthcare bill.
“We were very close, it was a very tight margin. We had no Democrat support, no votes from the Democrats,” Trump said last week, adding that House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi and Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer were “the losers . . . because now they own ObamaCare.”
With Post Wire Services