Trump and GOP leaders meet at White House as president plans to visit NC, defends executive orders

Republican leaders in Congress met with the president Donald Trump on Tuesday, and the president made some public statements after the summit at the White House.

Senate Majority Leader John Thune of South Dakota and House Speaker Mike Johnson of Louisiana are expected to address reporters in their first meeting with the new president since he began his second term.

Trump clashed with some Republicans in Congress late last year as the federal government faced a potential shutdown that was ultimately narrowly avoided.

Other Republican leaders present at Tuesday’s meeting include House Majority Leader Steve Scalise of Louisiana, House Majority Representative Tom Emmer of Minnesota and House Conference Chairwoman Lisa McClain of Michigan.

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On the Senate side, Senate Republican Rep. John Barrasso of Wyoming and conference chairs Tom Cotton of Arkansas and Shelley Moore Capito of West Virginia were also part of the discussion.

While Trump signed a slew of executive orders on his first day in office, he also signaled a willingness to work with Republicans in Congress to get key parts of his agenda through the legislature.

During a statement to the media after meeting with Republicans, Trump mentioned the gathering as well as his new executive orders the renaming of Mount Denali and the Gulf of Mexico.

He said President William McKinley was worthy of having his name back on top in North America, joking that his fellow Republican was known as the “Tariff King” and presided over one of the strongest economies in US history.

Trump claimed that the US was the “richest country” in the world between 1870 and 1913. McKinley had just begun his second term when he was assassinated in Buffalo, New York, in 1901.

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When asked about pardoning convicts on Jan. 6, Trump agreed that it is never right to attack a police officer, but suggested that the press and the left have not expressed the same concern for those involved in weeks of wildfires in Portland, Oregon and Minneapolis following the death of George Floyd.

Trump also talked about stripping his former adviser John Bolton of Secret Service protection, calling the Baltimore native a “warmonger” and a “very stupid person.”

Later in his press statement, Trump announced that he will visit North Carolina and California in the coming days.

Trump implicitly referred to the areas of the Smokie Mountains that were decimated by Hurricane Helena, claiming that Democrats abandoned the Tarheel State after the historic storm that hit much of the US, especially the area from Damascus, Virginia to Augusta, Georgia.

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Trump also seems to have suggested Democrats and failures of democratic politics in the run-up to the wildfires in Los Angeles, he left the party “dead, politically” in California.

“What they did was destroyed [Los Angeles]” he said, referring to sprinklers without water and hydrants without adequate water or pressure.

He said California leaders either have a “death wish [or] they’re either stupid or something else is going on.”

When he travels to California, he may run into one of his longtime political enemies, Sen. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., who is now the state’s junior senator.