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Yo_Mama_Been_Loggin

(107,102 posts)
Fri Sep 14, 2018, 05:07 PM Sep 2018

The White House Unified On Old Issues -- And Then Started New Fights

The Trump administration has deep internal conflicts. That was true when President Trump was sworn into office, and it’s true now. But the nature of those conflicts has changed: The mostly ideological fights of 2017 seem to have somewhat subsided, while issues around Russia are creating new (and maybe even bigger) fissures.

You can see much of this play out in Bob Woodward’s new book “Fear: Trump in the White House.” The book is largely about the conflicts of 2017, and parallels reporting from outlets like The New York Times and The Washington Post in detailing how factions pursuing different policy goals within the administration competed to get Trump to take their side. Since Woodward’s book is essentially the most comprehensive version to date of this genre of D.C. reporting, its release seems like a good moment to update our taxonomy of the various “wings” of the White House.

“Fear” depicts several policy fault lines in the administration, including major conflicts on defense issues and trade. It describes then-top White House economics adviser Gary Cohn and then-staff secretary Rob Porter trying to talk the president out of overhauling international trade agreements or withdrawing completely from them. Woodward also writes that Secretary of Defense James Mattis and other national security officials pushed Trump to maintain GOP establishment positions on defense policy, like keeping some U.S. forces in Afghanistan.

But the fight over pure policy issues, I would argue, is basically over. Trump has essentially settled on a traditionally Republican pro-tax-cut, anti-regulation economic vision1; stances on cultural issues that appeal to his base, particularly white evangelicals2; and a fairly hawkish foreign policy.3 The president opted to move forward on his agenda of rethinking international trade agreements, so Cohn quit. Trump has decided he doesn’t want to embrace traditional American allies like Germany, leading to tension with top aides like National Security Adviser H.R. McMaster and Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, both of whom Trump eventually dismissed.

https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/the-white-house-unified-on-old-issues-and-then-started-new-fights/

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