With friends like these: How Republicans could destroy Donald Trump’s agenda

HE’S been labelled a “toddler POTUS” and his office a “snake pit” — and that’s just what his friends are saying.

President Donald Trump hosts a meeting with House and Senate leadership. Picture: AP

ANALYSIS

HE has no shortage of Democratic rivals lining up to sink the boot in, but some of US President Donald Trump’s fiercest critics are now emerging from his own side.

Behind the disquiet over Trump interventions, such his clumsy rewriting of health care laws, is a deep and barely disguised hostility towards the new President from within his own Republican party.

Mike Murphy is a highly regarded Republican political consultant with a record of top-shelf clients and particular skills in quick and effective communication with voters.

These days he is going tweet-for-tweet with President Trump, and addressing questions that the man in the White House doesn’t want dwelt on.

Such questions as: With all the TV he watches and all the time he spends on Twitter, when does Trump get to do president stuff?

Or as Mr Murphy put it: “How many hours of WH time is being wasted coming up with new bullsh*t to cover idiotic tweets? Meanwhile, who’s minding the Natl Interest?”

But he seems to have most fun providing sharp-edged analysis of some of those presidential tweets.

On March 4 Mr Trump said this: “Terrible! Just found out that Obama had my ‘wires tapped’ in Trump Tower just before the victory. Nothing found. This is McCarthyism!”

Mr Murphy responded: “In other words, POTUS was speed dialling known Putin goons who were under US surveillance... Russian bankers perhaps?”

He is unimpressed with Mr Trump’s most senior advisers, describing dishevelled West Wing insider Stephen Bannon as someone struck by a bottle of Glenlivet whisky.

On the office run by Trump chief of staff Reince Priebus, he tweeted simply: “What a snake pit.”

US President Donald Trump is weathering attacks from inside his own party. Picture: AFP

But he reserves most venom for the man himself.

Mr Trump recently tweeted: “Arnold Schwarzenegger isn’t voluntarily leaving The Apprentice, he was fired by his bad (pathetic) ratings, not by me. Sad end to great show.”

The Murphy response: “Says the Toddler POTUS with the lowest first month polling numbers in American History. #Sad.”

Which brings us to Mr Murphy’s client list.

He worked for Arnold Schwarzenegger in his successful campaign to be California Governor. He also worked for Jeb Bush, whose bid for the family job of president was squashed under the Trump battle wagon, and he helped the careers of John McCain, a fierce Trump critic, and

Mitt Romney, another non-fan.

In short, Mike Murphy, gruff and tough as he appears, comes from the establishment heights of the Republican Party, and his attacks on Donald Trump are representative of sentiments being exercised at those heights.

It’s not a happy party, despite having their man in the White House.

Move now to the consideration by Congress of legislation known unofficially by some, and embarrassingly by others, as The World’s Greatest Healthcare Plan of 2017.

The American Health Care Act is the Trump rewriting of Obamacare — the Affordable Care Act — and has passed scrutiny by two Congressional committees.

For some Democrats the bill is flawed and approval is moving much too quickly, without detailed examination. And some Republicans agree.

White House chief of staff Reince Priebus’s office has been called a ‘snake pit’. Picture: AFP

The Washington Post reports Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, a Republican, said lawmakers needed to see the Congressional Budget Office’s estimate of how the bill will affect the federal deficit.

The Post reported Senator McConnell was “the first in growing chorus of high-ranking Senate Republicans to question the wisdom of moving forward on the health bill without an official budget tally”.

This contrasted with the views of the President who tweeted: “Despite what you hear in the press, healthcare is coming along great. We are talking to many groups and it will end in a beautiful picture!”

The President also is facing Republican opposition to his one big project — a huge wall on the border with Mexico.

Senate Majority Leader and Republican Mitch McConnell, centre, is said to be unhappy with Trump’s healthcare bill. Picture: Getty

Pew Research Friday found while the party broadly thought it would be a great wall, those closer to its possible route were doubters. Pew found in a survey taken in February that 35 per cent of the public favoured building a wall along the entire US-Mexican border, while 62

per cent were opposed. Nearly three-quarters of Republicans and Republican-leaning independents (74 per cent) supported building the wall, compared with just 8 per cent of Democrats and Democratic leaners.

However, the approval by Republicans falls from 74 per cent to 63 per cent among party supporters who lived within 560km of the border.

Opposition grew from 24 per cent of Republicans to 34 per cent. Even fewer Republicans endorse the wall plan if they live within 320km of its route.

So those Republicans who knew most about border matters were more inclined to question the plan than their more-distant cousins.

Meanwhile a CNN poll found 65 per cent of Americans wanted a special prosecutor to probe Mr Trump’s Russian connections. And about half of Republicans agreed.

These salvos of friendly fire won’t stop Donald Trump, but they are further indications he still has fence mending — if not wall building — to do. Not all Republicans are as impressed by Donald Trump as he is.

Or to finish with a Mike Murphy tweet, he endorsed a playful, Trump-like cap which carried the slogan: “How the right lost its mind.”