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It was as if Mark Meadows was watching a slow car political crash. In November 2018, when House Republicans lost their legislative majority, it made him a little player in Donald Trump's Washington state. Then in late November and early December, a more paralyzing fear began to slip in his mind: the Republicans would retreat and leave the government open without keeping the promise of the President to finance the construction of the border wall with Mexico. Unthinkable. Unreasonable. He had to stop him.
When he entered a divided government, Meadows thought it was finally Trump Hill on which to die. "It's a symbol of the dysfunction of the government as a whole, and it's bigger than the wall, and that's why both sides are sunk," Meadows told us in January. "Who's going to decide what will happen over the next two years under this administration … We're trying to figure out who will be the most powerful person in Washington, DC, and ultimately, it's Nancy Pelosi or it's going to be Donald J. Trump. And that's what it comes down to. "
History continues below
A few months after the 34 days of stalemate that followed, the full story of how the president was pushed to closure is a lesson on how to take the reins of Trump's Washington. The lawmakers around Trump who wanted a closure knew exactly how to get the president to their side: threatening that others might perceive him as weak and push this threat around Capitol Hill and possibly up to Fox News . It was also helpful to have a man inside – in this case, Acting Chief of Staff, Mick Mulvaney. When Meadows was about to find out, it was enough to follow this book to get into the head of Washington's most powerful man and use it to get what Meadows and his allies wanted.
The Republican Washington making a last gasp and the Democrat D.C. raising his head, the President was ready to take the plunge. November 27, during an interview at the Oval Office for politico, Trump set out his demands: he wanted at least $ 5 billion for his wall and more money for border security.
The leader of the Senate minority, Chuck Schumer, called each member of his democratic caucus to tell them that they could not let Trump get $ 5 billion. "There is a final phase," said Schumer during an interview a few days before the White House meeting. "On January 3, Nancy will spend a [funding bill] without the wall, and we'll be fine for it, and it will be Mitch McConnell who will keep the government closed. He added, "We think we have the upper hand. "
Schumer was right. On December 11, he and the House minority leader, Nancy Pelosi, went to the White House for an immigration meeting with the president. Before long, the moment that would let the Republicans wince. Injured by Schumer to find out who would be responsible in the event of government closure, Trump decided to own him. "I'll tell you what, I'm proud to close the government for border security, Chuck, because Canadians do not want criminals and people who have a lot of problems and drugs come to our country" said the president. the president said. "Then I'll take the coat. I will be the only one to close it. "
The meeting was a resounding success for the Democrats and an undeniable train accident for the Republicans. there was almost unanimity on this subject on Capitol Hill, even among the assistants of the president. The president had a different point of view. After the meeting, Trump told House Speaker Paul Ryan that "the marks were excellent. That's why I was so good at L & # 39; s apprentice," he said.
"There are evaluations for that kind of thing?" Ryan asked, apparently confused by the remark.
"There are assessments for everything," said Trump.
***
A little more than a week later, While Meadows was on the floor of the house, urging the Republicans to keep a stiff backbone, his fears of a retreat of the Gop people would materialize on the other side of the Capitol Dome. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell was preparing a bill to fund the entire government until February 2019. This would be a way to avoid a closure, which would have the additional benefit of disrupting the beginnings Pelosi's presidency with a wall crisis – a skirmish Republicans thought they could win.
Meadows did not like that. Why, in the name of God, would the Republicans have more weight once the Democrats took over Parliament? he was thinking. Start the fight now. After leaving the room, he headed to the Capitol Hill Club with Representative Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) and his colleague, the Freedom Caucus Representative, Scott Perry (R-Pa.). They had come to meet Mulvaney, their former colleague recently appointed acting chief of staff of the White House, for a bite. Whether they planned or not, the private club meeting became the starting point for the longest stop in the history of the United States.
At about 10 pm, a few blocks away on Capitol Hill, McConnell did exactly what Meadows had predicted: he examined the Senate bill with little fanfare. The Senate was ready to give up. They passed the bill by vote by vote, a rare method of passing a bill without a single senator having to vote. It showed how controversial it was in the Senate.
Then, with a phone call, the situation started to get out of control for McConnell and Ryan. House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy called Ryan with very bad news. He had spoken to Trump and had the impression that he was getting cold. The president had been watching cable news – most of the time Fox – and was being wooed. Another very expensive bill without money. It was the story that Meadows and Jordan had put in place and it worked: that's what the president heard and saw.
Then Ryan received a call from Trump himself and heard the bad news directly from the mouth of the president: Trump told Ryan that he was being beaten on cable TV, that he did not like her and that he turned against the plan of expenditure.
Ryan had little patience for this type of bullshit. You have always suffered somewhere to make big decisions. Ryan was a darling of the right before becoming a speaker and gave up on that when he took the reins of leadership. That's what leaders do, Ryan thought. You take the flak and continue. Trump, according to Ryan, was never able to do it.
"That's how it always works," Ryan told the president. He explained that a compromise bill aimed at keeping the government open would actually anger the Fox News listeners, but that they would eventually get over it. The speaker tried to explain to Trump that a stop was not in his interest, but that he was not making much progress. "There is no final phase," Ryan said. "You're just going to help the Democrats."
"OK," said Trump. "Let's talk in the morning." Ryan hung up, feeling a little better.
But at Capitol Hill Club, Meadows and Jordan have created problems. It was the moment, they were saying to the Republicans: the party should finally have the fight it had been waiting for two years. Build the wall! You remember it? Jordan and Meadows did it. And they were going to hold Trump on it. Mulvaney, a man from the Freedom Caucus in the soul, began to turn around the club, expressly threatening that the president could veto the package.
The next morning, the whole group looked like Meadows and Mulvaney. At a full-fledged meeting in camera, Republicans in the House revolted. It immediately became apparent that the Meadows brush fire had spread far and wide. The Republicans wanted to fight.
Ryan and McCarthy entered the meeting with what they thought was an achievable goal: to try to persuade barely half of the GOP members to vote for the bill passed by the Senate. But it was clear that the game had escaped them. McCarthy told his colleagues that Trump's request for $ 5 billion in funding could not be accepted by the House, but they simply booed and whistled.
As his Republican colleagues raged, Ryan's phone rang. It was the president. Ryan came out of the meeting and went to a small office located next to the party meeting room in the Capitol to take the call. It was as if her conversation with Trump from the previous night had resumed exactly where she had stopped: Trump was telling Ryan again that he was being killed on TV.
Again? Ryan was pissed. He knew that Meadows had reached the president. Look, he told Trump, "they're Fox News guys, they're guys from the Freedom Caucus and that's it." Ryan wanted Trump to realize that the opposition was limited. "What is your final phase?" The questioned Ryan again. "How are you doing? It's like shooting yourself in the foot. "
Ryan tried to convince Trump to suspend this fight until February 2019. He urged the president to sign the package and then spend the next two months defending an immigration deal that would exchange DACA protections against a big wall. McConnell and he were trying separately to explain to Trump that, when Pelosi took over, he would have no influence over her. But everything fell in the ear of a deaf person.
Ryan hung up the phone with the president after 45 minutes, not having progressed. He did not bother to go back to the meeting room.
Towards the end of the meeting, the Meadows phone rang. The identity of the caller indicated "unavailable", so he knew that he was the president. Trump told Meadows that he had talked to Ryan and had the impression that he belonged to the Freedom caucus – Ryan called them "Freedoms" – who opposed the government preservation, not to a wide range of Republicans. Meadows told the president that Ryan was not direct with him.
Trump then asked Meadows and Republican leaders to go to the White House and asked the leader of the Freedom Caucus to bring 10 more Republicans with him. Trump did not want right-wing conservatives, but rather a group representing the entire party. Ryan and Meadows then headed for Pennsylvania Avenue for the White House.
At the meeting, Trump had absolutely no doubts about what he was thinking: if he does not have security at the border, he will not sign it. Of course, each bill under consideration had more than $ 1 billion in border security but not the billions he wanted for his Wall. Throughout the meeting, Trump hesitated between politics, politics and grievances. He always complained that Pelosi and Schumer doubted that the House could exceed the $ 5 billion that he wanted for his wall. He seemed to want the House to do it for the explicit reason of proving to them that they were wrong.
At the end of the meeting, one thing was clear: the President sided with Meadows and Jordan, two members of the Basic Congress, the Speaker of the House, and the Senate Majority Leader. He would not sign the bill without billions of dollars for his border wall. It was a breathtaking coda for two years. The government was heading toward a closure, and no one – including the president, Meadows and Jordan – had any idea of how to restore it.
***
Weeks later after Ryan proved that it was good and that Trump was forced to reopen the government without getting anything in return, Trump's anger with the Democrats reached a climax. But the closure had revealed another great paradox of Donald John Trump: he often boasted of his Republican stature, but he still seemed caught off guard by the other party and its leaders. He has contracted with them, often asserting that he was willing to abandon all of the principles that had elected him to power in order to achieve bipartisan results, before he died. To be dismissed by his party. Deep down, Trump seemed to know that the Democrats had something that the Republicans and, more keenly, he, still struggled to find: unity.
"They are lousy politicians, they are ugly about politics, they have had the worst ideas in the world, but they remain united," Trump told Democrats late November, a few weeks before the closure. "And Republicans do not stick together either, agree? There is no question about it. And I respect them for that, and I say it to the Republicans. I say, "These people are united. Even if it's bad, they stay together. "
Adapted from THE HILL TO DIE ON: The Battle of Congress and the Future of Trump America. Copyright © 2019 by Jake Sherman and Anna Palmer. Posted by Crown, a print of Random House, a division of Penguin Random House LLC.
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