As the deadline for a government shutdown approached, lawmakers on Capitol Hill were intently focused on a stopgap spending measure. Donald Trump was not.
In fact, the president-elect didn’t say much of anything about Congress’s continuing resolution as it took shape, and he was equally silent when leaders unveiled a bipartisan agreement on Tuesday. On Wednesday, however, after Elon Musk targeted the bipartisan deal with misinformation, Trump decided to intervene, too, condemning the legislation and making new, 11th-hour demands.
A day later, House Republican leaders crafted an alternative package, which appeared designed to placate the incoming president. At least initially, they succeeded: Trump published an enthusiastic endorsement of the GOP-only bill to his social media platform, directing “all Republicans” to vote for it in order to “do what is best for our Country.”
Hours later, the Trump-endorsed bill failed in an embarrassing fashion — in part because so many Republicans ignored the president-elect’s directive. The New York Times reported:
President-elect Donald J. Trump’s hammerlock on the Republican Party was shaken on Thursday night when 38 of his party’s lawmakers in the House voted to defy his command to support a spending and debt deal. ... [W]ith just a month left before he returns to office, Mr. Trump found out that at least some of his followers were willing to buck his leadership in the right circumstances.
There’s obviously no denying that Trump is the dominant voice in contemporary Republican Party politics. Indeed, a great many observers have made the case that the modern GOP often resembles a personality cult surrounding the president-elect, and those arguments are quite persuasive. The Times’ report added that Trump has “methodically seized control of the Republican Party at all levels,” which is undeniably true.
But what often goes overlooked is that when it comes to events on Capitol Hill, the incoming president likes to bark orders, but GOP members don’t always follow them. That’s in part because Trump still has no idea how to persuade policymakers and in part because some lawmakers have ideological preferences that eclipse Trump’s demands.
This happens more often than some in the party like to admit, especially in the wake of Trump’s 2020 defeat. Earlier this year, for example, Congress weighed how and whether to reauthorize the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA). Trump intervened in the hopes of derailing the effort, directing Republicans to “KILL FISA” because of a misguided conspiracy theory.
Trump failed: Congress reauthorized FISA with ample support from GOP lawmakers who felt comfortable ignoring his orders.
A day later, as the Republican-led House prepared to take up U.S. security aid for Ukraine, Trump didn’t explicitly denounce the legislation, though he wasn’t especially subtle about his opposition. GOP leaders brought the bill to the floor anyway, and it passed with over 300 bipartisan votes.
These are not isolated incidents. Trump told House Republicans to elect Rep. Jim Jordan as House speaker, and that didn’t happen. Trump told Republicans to shut down the government in September 2023, and that didn’t happen. Trump told Republicans to use the debt ceiling to default on the country’s obligations, and that didn’t happen.
As regular readers might recall, Trump also told Senate Republicans to replace Mitch McConnell as the Senate minority leader, and they didn’t. Trump told Republicans to derail a bipartisan infrastructure package, and they didn’t. Trump seemed especially eager for GOP lawmakers to kill an overhaul of the Electoral Count Act, and they didn’t do that, either.
There’s a myth in some circles that Trump can call the shots and watch GOP lawmakers link arms and obediently follow his instructions.
In several notable instances, that’s just not the case.
This post updates our related earlier coverage.