Testing Trump's vise grip on the GOP

Dec 19, 2024

POLITICO'S West Wing Playbook: Transition of Power

By Lisa Kashinsky, Eli Stokols, Lauren Egan, Megan Messerly and Ben Johansen

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Welcome to POLITICO’s West Wing Playbook, your guide to the preparations, personnel decisions and policy deliberations of Donald Trump’s transition. POLITICO Pro subscribers receive a version of this newsletter first.

DONALD TRUMP’s iron grip on his party is on full display right now, after he tanked the initial government-funding deal and forced congressional Republicans back to the bargaining table barely two days before a shutdown deadline. (The GOP struck a new deal Thursday afternoon, much to Trump's satisfaction, but it's unlikely to succeed on the House floor tonight.)

Taken with his and his team’s ongoing pressure campaigns to push through his more controversial high-level appointees, Trump appears hell-bent on squashing any remaining Republican resistance to his aims — hello, CHIP ROY — before he resumes office next month.

But at least one group is testing Trump’s support among Republicans for signs of weakness.

The anti-Trump super PAC Lincoln Project is releasing a steady drumbeat of videos and press releases raising concerns about some of Trump’s potential policy endeavors and more controversial picks — PETE HEGSETH for Defense secretary, TULSI GABBARD for national intelligence director — and urging key GOP senators not to go along with them.

The group’s goal is simple, according to its chief of staff, RYAN WIGGINS: “Make sure some of the more dangerous of Trump’s appointments do not get through, and make sure we’re applying pressure on the senators who are squishy on them.”

It’s one of the earliest signs of regrouping among anti-Trump forces that, already fractured, splintered into shards after his November victory. Wiggins said it’s a preview of resistance efforts she expects will ramp up once Trump returns to office on Jan. 20.

The push to derail some of the president-elect’s appointees will stand as an early test of whether Trump-skeptical Republicans and anti-Trump actors will be able to, as former GOP Rep. JOE WALSH recently put it, “productively throw rocks” at the incoming administration and its allies on the Hill — or whether their already-limited influence has vanished entirely in the wake of Trump’s second win.

MIKE MADRID, a veteran political consultant who helped found The Lincoln Project but is no longer affiliated with the group, told West Wing Playbook that he believes anti-Trump forces could see success in an approach narrowly targeted to a handful of key senators who could serve as swing votes.

“Playing for specific Republican senators will be exponentially more successful than trying to change or rebrand the party, for sure,” Madrid said.

Trump’s team quickly dismissed The Lincoln Project’s efforts, with STEVEN CHEUNG, Trump’s incoming White House communications director, casting the group as “stone-cold losers” who “are trying to keep their grift going by spreading lies and untruths about President Trump's highly qualified nominees.”

We’re already seeing limits to this strategy — and, more broadly, to pushback against Trump from within the Republican tent. Nearly all of Trump’s foils have been cast out of Congress. Members of his first administration who have criticized him over the years have not been invited back for his second — leaving once-prominent Republicans like former U.N. ambassador NIKKI HALEY and former Vice President MIKE PENCE lobbing criticism about Gabbard and HHS secretary nominee ROBERT F. KENNEDY JR. from the sidelines.

Early resistance from those who remain in office is also showing cracks. Sen. JONI ERNST (R-Iowa), a combat veteran who has been vocal about her experience as a survivor of sexual assault, appeared to warm to Hegseth after her initial skepticism prompted intense backlash from within her party — including the threat of a primary challenge in 2026. Sen. MITCH McCONNELL (R-Ky.) has recently criticized Trump and his allies’ “flirtation” with isolationism and called out associates of Kennedy’s for pushing to rescind approval of the polio vaccine. But it’s unclear how much of a Trump foil the outgoing GOP leader will ultimately be from his new perch.

And that was all before Trump blew up Republicans’ government-funding fix and left Speaker MIKE JOHNSON scrambling to accede to his demands — including his curveball of lifting the debt ceiling.

Sen. LISA MURKOWSKI (R-Alaska) acknowledged at a No Labels conference in D.C. last week that standing up to Trump is “going to be hard in these next four years.”

“You have an administration coming in that has had an opportunity to kind of see how things work, what didn't work, and now they've had four years to think about it, she said, “and the approach is going to be: ‘Everybody toe the line.’”

Irie Sentner contributed to this report.

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POTUS PUZZLER

Which first lady was the first to choose a theme for the White House Christmas tree?

(Answer at bottom.)

Pro Exclusive

Phillips says he will stay at FERC as long as he’s chair, via our CATHERINE MOREHOUSE

Rising tides are coming for Lee Zeldin’s hometown, via our MIRANDA WILLSON

Rural utilities are slashing CO2. Will it last under Trump?, via our JASON PLAUTZ

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Heads up, we're all transition all the time over on our live blog: Inside Congress Live: Transition of Power. Bookmark politico.com/transition to keep up with us.

THE BUREAUCRATS

FIRST IN WEST WING PLAYBOOK: Yesterday, our BRIAN FALER reported that Trump’s nominee to lead the IRS, former Rep. BILLY LONG (R-Mo.), bragged on a podcast last year that he got several people to qualify for a tax break that has been plagued by fraud. Now, our DANIEL LIPPMAN and Ben have learned that the episode of the podcast, “Brainsky Unleashed,” has since been taken down on most platforms, including Apple Podcasts and Spotify. It’s technically still available on the podcast search engine Listen Notes, but the audio no longer works.

On the episode, Long talked at length about helping people file for the employee retention tax credit, a pandemic-era benefit that was later paused by the IRS due to claims of fraud. He reportedly worked with companies that would handle his clients' tax credit paperwork in exchange for a portion of a client’s refund.

“We have attorneys that write opinion letters to make sure everyone does qualify,” Long said. “So we have yet to have one turned down.”

As the IRS commissioner, Long would have significant control over the application process for the controversial credit.

Both Long and the Trump transition team didn’t respond to requests for comment. THOMAS BRAINSKY, the entrepreneur-host of the podcast, declined to comment.

MERRY CHRISTMAS TO US ALL HAHAHAHA: As we mentioned above, Republicans struck a new deal on a short-term government spending patch and potential debt limit increase after Trump and ELON MUSK torpedoed the first one.

But it seems like not all conservatives are on board with this version either, and Dems have united in opposition against it — meaning it's almost certainly doomed on the House floor, with less than 36 hours to go until a shutdown deadline, our NICHOLAS WU and DANIELLA DIAZ report.

“The Musk-Johnson proposal is not serious. It’s laughable. Extreme MAGA Republicans are driving us to a government shutdown,” House Minority Leader HAKEEM JEFFRIES told reporters Thursday as he walked into a closed-door caucus meeting.

The vote on the bill is scheduled to come up via a process called suspension, which means it needs to meet a two-thirds vote threshold to pass — an impossible feat with Democrats soundly against it.

THE HEGSETH DIARIES: At least a dozen senators are pushing to see the FBI’s background check on Hegseth, Trump’s embattled pick to be Defense secretary — a rare move for the committee that oversees his confirmation and a sign the former Fox News host still faces hurdles in the Senate, our JOE GOULD reports. The Senate Armed Services committee, unlike other bodies, usually limits access to these types of background checks to its two lead senators. But pressure is building from both Democrats and Republicans to provide more lawmakers with the ongoing report.

“It would be helpful, given the allegations that have been lodged against Mr. Hegseth, to be able to see the FBI background check,” Sen. SUSAN COLLINS (R-Maine), a potential swing vote on Hegseth, said in an interview.

STILL LANDING: Trump’s transition team has landed at both the Energy and Labor departments. Our KELSEY TAMBORRINO and Daniel Lippman report for Pro subscribers that the team at Energy includes three former officials from the president-elect’s first administration. TED GARRISH, a former assistant secretary at the department, is leading the incoming administration's DOE landing team. He’s joined by PAUL DABBAR, the undersecretary for science during the first Trump administration, and WELLS GRIFFITH, who held numerous roles at the Trump DOE and White House

And our NICK NIEDZWIADEK reports that the DOL landing team includes Virginia Secretary of Labor BRYAN SLATER, former Equal Employment Opportunity Commission member KEITH SONDERLING and health care executive THOMAS BECK.

A message from Electronic Payments Coalition:

GUARD YOUR HOLIDAYS! The Durbin-Marshall Credit Card Bill puts your rewards at risk! A recent US News survey shows 68% of Americans are concerned about affording holiday gifts, and 55% will rely on credit card rewards to help cover costs. CONGRESS, don’t let Senators Durbin and Marshall steal the rewards families need this holiday season!

Agenda Setting

BIDEN’S PARTING GIFT: High prices may have cost Democrats the election, but the U.S. economy has powered through 2024 with better-than-expected growth, our VICTORIA GUIDA reports. And now, Trump is poised to inherit and take credit for it. GDP rose at a 3.1 percent annualized pace in the third quarter of the year, according to Commerce Department data released Thursday, after growing at a 3 percent rate in the second quarter.

That growth, fed largely by steady consumer spending, comes alongside a still-low unemployment rate of 4.2 percent and much-improved inflation, which has fallen below 3 percent.

OVER IN THE PEACH STATE … A Georgia appeals court has ruled that Fulton County District Attorney FANI WILLIS is disqualified from prosecuting Trump in the criminal racketeering case she brought against the president-elect and his allies for their efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election, our JOSH GERSTEIN and KYLE CHENEY report. In a 2-1 decision on Thursday, the court found that Willis had created an appearance of a conflict of interest after her romantic relationship with an outside prosecutor whom she hired to help run the case was made public.

“This is the rare case in which disqualification is mandated and no other remedy will suffice to restore public confidence in the integrity of these proceedings,” Judge TRENTON BROWN wrote, addressing the legal implications of Willis’ relationship with prosecutor NATHAN WADE.

A message from Electronic Payments Coalition:

What We're Reading

‘The Black Swan Election’: Trump’s Campaign Chiefs Tell Their Inside Story (POLITICO’s Jonathan Martin)

Musk Makes a Mess of Congress (The Atlantic’s Russell Berman)

Trump was gliding into his inauguration. Now he’s facing a big mess. (POLITICO’s Irie Sentner)

A message from Electronic Payments Coalition:

The Durbin-Marshall Credit Card Bill threatens valuable rewards like cash-back and airline miles at a time when Americans need them the most. According to a recent US News survey, 68% of Americans are worried about affording gifts for loved ones this holiday season. With inflation and rising costs weighing heavily, 55% of Americans plan to use credit card rewards to cover groceries, gifts, and travel. Instead of cutting off a vital source of financial support, Senators Durbin and Marshall should focus on helping families find relief and joy during the holiday season.

POTUS PUZZLER ANSWER

First lady JACKIE KENNEDY began the tradition of choosing a theme for the official White House Christmas tree. In 1961, she picked a “Nutcracker Suite” theme that featured ornamental toys, birds and angels modeled after PYOTR TCHAIKOVSKY's "Nutcracker" ballet, according to the White House Historical Association. The ornaments were made by disabled volunteers and senior citizen craftspeople throughout the United States.

A CALL OUT! Do you think you have a harder trivia question? Send us your best one about the presidents, with a citation or sourcing, and we may feature it!

Edited by Zach Montellaro and Rishika Dugyala.

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