Messy behind-the-scenes competition in the Trump transition could shape Hill’s strategy
The Republican senator was expressing his displeasure with Susie Wiles, the incumbent The white house chief of staff.
“I sent you a message three days ago,” the representative said.
Wiles, who ran Donald Trump campaign, said that she had received it and that she would respond, without sounding like she was in a hurry.
No doubt her phone must be flooded with messages from people wanting jobs – or influence – in the incoming Trump administration.
Behind-the-scenes competition ahead of Trump’s second term could shed light on the legislative and administrative battles the next White House will be forced to fight. (Getty Images)
But the row sheds light on the dilemma Trump may face in a city he controls, with both houses of Congress under Republican administration (and Kamala Harris calmly confirmed the transfer of power yesterday, four years after the Capitol riots).
The flip side of almost unlimited power is that when things go wrong, there is no one else to blame.
And then there is the black hole known as Congress. Pulling up Mike Johnson across the speaker race finish line, making calls even from his golf course, Trump now faces a dilemma after the Christmas debt ceiling battle that just delayed the budget battle until March.
Using a process known as reconciliation, which lowers the threshold from 60 votes in the Senate to 51 — both parties have used it for partisan dominance — Trump is favoring “one big beautiful bill.” That would include budget cuts, energy deregulation, tax cuts, border crackdowns and other presidential priorities.
But many on the Hill support two separate bills, and some in Trump World believe Congress simply doesn’t have the bandwidth to access the kitchen sink.
So the big beautiful bill may not pass until June, denying the 47th president an early victory.
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Johnson will have just a 1-vote margin, making it difficult for him to achieve the deep spending cuts that hardliners want in the wake of the battle that brought down Kevin McCarthy.
Meanwhile, the Department of Homeland Security would have difficulty launching a major initiative because, like other agencies, it is working on a temporary spending budget that nearly shut down the government on Christmas Day.
The risk of pushing two bills is that when the first passes, momentum could fizzle out to pass the second measure, even if it contains Trump priorities such as tax cuts.
House Speaker Mike Johnson’s one-vote majority leaves him little room for error in his efforts to rally his caucus around the incoming president’s agenda. (Valerie Plesch)
Trump hedged his bets yesterday, telling radio host Hugh Hewitt: “I’d prefer one, but … I’m open to either way, as long as we get something done as soon as possible.”
Washington is a city obsessed with titles and perceived influence, and this will affect the way the White House is run.
Wiles helped demote some jobs that had always been assistant to the president to deputy assistant to the president—something no sane outsider would care about, but a big deal to insiders. That’s because after reaching the limit for assistant jobs, the only alternative was to create a bunch of alternate positions.
For her part, Wiles told Axios: “I don’t welcome people who want to go solo or be a star. . . . My team and I will not tolerate gossip, inappropriate speculation or drama. It’s counterproductive to the mission. .”
Karoline Leavitt, the new press secretary, is also stripped of the large office her predecessors used for at least three decades. That goes to another communications assistant.
I remember being in that office on the second floor when Mike McCurry was press secretary, and Bill Clinton coming in and chatting while I was working on my book “The Spin Cycle”. The reason for the large office was crowds with journalists and sometimes interviews, which most of the small offices in the west wing could not accommodate.
Anyone in Wiles’ sensitive position would inevitably upset some officials during the process that determines winners and losers. But Trump views her as a grandmother and doesn’t yell at her like he might other officials over disagreements.
As regards Elon Musk strong role, Trump enjoys the company of the rich, and the owner of X is the richest person on the planet. So he has influence while he’s gone, if the future falls out.
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Plus, it will be harder for Musk to last when Trump moves from Mar-a-Lago to the White House, unless he wants to give Elon the Lincoln bedroom.
For now, the transition is organized chaos. But as Trump knows all too well, having done this job before, he owns it when there’s a terrorist attack or an incident at the border or food prices rise.
In the meantime, with Kamala Harris confirming his defeat yesterday in routine fashion – livestreaming given the history of January 6th – Donald Trump posted this:
Trump has made no secret of his feelings about how Team Biden is handling the presidential transition. (Getty/AP)
“Biden is doing everything in his power to make the TRANSITION as difficult as possible, from unprecedented legislation to expensive and ridiculous Green New Scam Executive Orders and other money-sucking scams. Fear not, these ‘Orders’ will all soon be abolished, and we will become a nation of common sense and strength!!!”
Is it worse than what happened on January 6, 202?
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It’s true that the outgoing president, among other things, issued an order to halt oil exploration along 625 million acres of the seabed, but there’s no reason a “drill, baby, drill” president can’t change that, even though it might slow him down.
Yesterday, Harris gave a short speech about the peaceful transfer of power, and Biden said in an op-ed for the Washington Post that we must never forget what happened on that dark day.
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Regardless of who you agree with, I think it’s fair to say that the issue was debated in the election and that Americans voted to put Trump back in the White House knowing full well what happened during the televised riots.
