According to Jonathan Swan and Mike Allen at Axios, The Occupant, himself, appears to have brokered a truce between the Stephen Bannon and Jared Kushner factions in the White House.
President Trump's message to his feuding inner circle during a Thursday summit at Mar-a-Lago was blunt, according to a source with direct knowledge: "You guys are close. Knock it off. Work together."
The extraordinary presidential intervention, amid war planning on Syria, was aimed at resetting a West Wing consumed with palace intrigue as Trump closes in on his administration's 100-day mark.
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Settlement: The situation had become unsustainable, and the president stepped in with the instruction to "knock it off." On Friday, there was a meeting among Priebus, Bannon, Kushner, and his wife, Ivanka Trump.
The meeting was "100 percent" focused on moving the president's agenda, said one source. But the subtext was clear: The boss wanted them to make up and disarm. Although he had been considering changes on his top staff (and names of possible replacements had circulated among senior aides), they were being given the chance to fix it themselves.
Bannon had fought internally against the Syrian intervention — one of the most momentous decisions of Trump's young presidency — and lost. On Saturday, his camp said new domestic policies are coming that reflect his worldview. But Kushner allies insist a new, less combative, more centrist Trump will still emerge.
Mike Allen’s earlier report at Axios about the decision to retain Reince Priebus as Chief of Staff also discussed this new “centrist” pivot that The Occupant will apparently attempt to make.
I agree with Josh Marshall of Talking Points Memo on these new developments...to a certain extent.
Let's not be naive. Personal political interest is always in tension with ideology for every politician. But there is something qualitatively different here. What is I think being accurately described is an understanding of the "interests of the president" which is entirely separate not only from "ideology" but what we'd likely consider even the broadest sort of political viewpoint and belief. The "interests of the president" here is being popular, having strong poll numbers, 'winning' as Trump himself might put it. Bannon is putting "ideology" ahead of that.
This is superficially like calculations all or most politicians make. But again it's qualitatively different. Here there really is no tension. A 'typical' politician of the right may try to pass himself as cuddly and spendy in a tough political year. But he won't become a Democrat. He'll bend as far as necessary to stay in office. A comparable logic applies to embattled Democrats. This, however, is a vision of politics or ideology as a mere product line which is by definition inherently secondary to the interests of the company bottom line.
I agree with Marshall that, with the popularity of this president being on life support, having strong poll numbers is a bigger issue at the moment than ideology and that, for the moment, what Marshall loosely defines as the “Bloomberg Democrats”; a faction where “words and policy have no meaning” is ascendant in the WH (at least on the surface of things) and that the preeminent core value is, in Marshall’s words, “protecting and maximizing the value of the new family acquisition: the presidency.”
In the case of this presidential administration, however, I don’t think this is going to work for a couple of reasons.
One reason is unique to this Administration; the ongoing investigation into Russia’s attempt to subvert our electoral process; possibly with the help of the Trump campaign. There will be congressional hearings forthcoming and breaking news stories written and broadcast that will remind many Americans that there is nothing normal about the manner in which this Administration came to occupy the White House.
The second reason is fundamental to each and every presidency: the presidential mandate.
Every president is voted into office because earns enough votes where he earns them (the Electoral College!) with certain demographic groups for certain reasons and policy proposals.
While a lot of the jokes about the short attention span of the American voter are, IMO, completely justified, the notion of the “presidential mandate” is never that far away from the mind of the voters or the occupant of the Oval Office.
It’s part of the reason why George H.W. Bush’s “read my lips” pledge not to raise taxes boomeranged on him in the 1992 election.
It’s why no amount of advisement was going to prevent Barack Obama from further de-escalating the war in Iraq.
In President Obama’s case, I think that people were (and are) understanding, to extent, of other entanglements, including Afghanistan (sometimes a President has to do what a president has to do) but not the boondoggle that became to be known as the Iraq War.
Donald Trump’s “mandate”, as it were, was following up on his highly incendiary racist rhetoric during the campaign with a big, beautiful border wall that Mexico would pay for, banning Muslims from entering the United States, “law and order” and mass deportations. Yes, there was also jobs,jobs, jobs, trade deals, new infrastructure, and “beautiful” medical insurance where everyone would be covered.
Ultimately, these will be the yardsticks that Trump will be measured by in addition to his possible Russia connections.
The Muslim ban sits in ruins because of the courts, the ACHA went nowhere (and would have thrown tens of millions off of the health insurance rolls), it seems as if we won’t be seeing a wall on the Mexican border anytime soon and there is fierce resistance to the what appears to be the Trump Administration’s notions of “law and order” (harassing black and brown folks).
And there’s Russia, Russia, Russia.
I doubt that Jared Kushner and the “Bloomberg Democrats” have enough lipstick to put on all of these pigs and, to this point, failed policies...the Trump Administration is already in a pickle, is a pickle and it can never be a cucumber again.