Trump returns to Capitol Hill for first time since January 6 riot
The former US president brought his comeback campaign to Washington to rally Republicans and business leaders, in his first visit to the capital since the January 6 riot in 2021.
Former US president Donald Trump brought his comeback campaign to the capital to rally Republican lawmakers and business leaders, doubling down on the pro-tariff, anti-income-tax agenda he championed while in office.
A pair of meetings Thursday with GOP members of Congress were the first such gatherings since a Manhattan jury found Trump guilty of 34 felonies for falsifying records to cover up hush money paid to a porn star. They also marked Trump’s first visit to Capitol Hill since his supporters mobbed the Capitol complex on January 6, 2021, in an effort to halt certification of President Joe Biden’s victory in the Electoral College.
The meetings with senators and House members were meant to demonstrate a united front following Trump’s New York conviction, which they criticise as politically motivated. During a morning session with the House GOP, Trump floated the idea of an all-tariff federal revenue system, large enough to replace the income tax, according to the lawmaker in the room.
The presumptive GOP presidential nominee has consistently supported higher tariffs as a way to protect domestic industries. He has long backed income-tax cuts, including extensions of the ones he signed in 2017. An all-tariff approach would combine the two stances and take them to the extreme, reversing more than 100 years of economic policy that encourages free trade and requires higher-income households to pay higher tax rates than the middle class. Such a return to 19th-century fiscal policy could amount to a tax cut for high-income people and a tax increase on consumers.
Trump also brought up an idea he recently floated in Nevada, to eliminate taxes on workers’ tips. That could create a gap in the income tax and encourage more requests for tips, but Rep. Tom Cole (R., Okla.) said he liked the idea because tips could be considered more like gifts than income.
“There is considerable merit to that, in my view,” Cole said, adding that House Republicans would, in general, be “extraordinarily supportive” of Trump and his ideas.
Rep. Elise Stefanik (R., N.Y.), who has been mentioned as a potential running mate for Trump, was sitting with other House Republican leaders at Trump’s side, the lawmaker in the room said. At one point, Trump turned to House Speaker Mike Johnson to say: “I think you’re doing a terrific job,” according to the lawmaker.
Rep. Mark Amodei (R., Nev.) said he didn’t hear much policy talk from Trump. “It was a pep talk,” he said, adding that “the atmosphere was obviously enthusiastic”.
Trump later spoke to members of the Business Roundtable, including chief executives of the nation’s largest banks. Expected to be in attendance were JPMorgan Chase’s Jamie Dimon, Bank of America’s Brian Moynihan, Citigroup’s Jane Fraser and Wells Fargo’s Charlie Scharf, according to people familiar with their schedules.
Dimon and Trump have sparred publicly including earlier this year, after Dimon tried to drum up support for Nikki Haley, leading Trump to call the banker a “highly overrated globalist”. But Dimon has also said Trump deserved some credit for policies and that he would be prepared to work with him again, as he would any president.
Both JPMorgan and Citigroup had paused donations to the congressional representatives who objected to the 2020 election results amid the January 6 riots.
The Trump campaign said in a statement that the meetings with lawmakers would be focused on how Republicans can work together, on policies aimed at “protecting Social Security and Medicare, securing the southern border, and cutting taxes for hardworking families to bring back the booming economy from President Trump’s first term”.
Trump’s meeting with the Business Roundtable could feature his plans to keep — or even lower — the 21 per cent corporate tax rate that was set in the 2017 tax law. It is an area where large companies and the former president find common cause. His support for extending certain tariffs, should it come up, is a point of friction, however. He has called for a universal 10 per cent across-the-board tariff on imports to the US, plus a 60 per cent tariff on imports from China. Higher tariffs, according to experts, could be costly because businesses and consumers often can’t easily find substitutes.
The Trump campaign has said the former president’s trade plans would help strengthen the US economy.
Trump later held a midday session with Senate Republicans at the National Republican Senatorial Committee, the GOP’s Senate campaign arm, a few blocks from the Capitol building.
On the Hill, Trump’s audience is expected to include a handful of lawmakers reportedly under consideration by Trump for the vice-presidential slot, including Sens. J.D. Vance of Ohio, Marco Rubio of Florida and Tim Scott of South Carolina and Rep. Byron Donalds of Florida in addition to Stefanik.
In a sign of Trump’s success in consolidating GOP support on the Hill, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R., Ky.) said he attended the Thursday meeting with senators. The two men’s relationship ruptured in December 2020, when McConnell said in a speech on the Senate floor that Biden had won the election, despite Trump’s false claims that the election had been stolen from him. McConnell also called Trump personally responsible for the January 6 riot.
Still, McConnell endorsed Trump in March after Trump swept almost every Super Tuesday primary race, and McConnell said Thursday that the two men talked and shook hands a few times.
Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D., Calif.), the former House Speaker, said of Trump’s return to Capitol Hill: “Today, the instigator of an insurrection is returning to the scene of the crime,” adding: “Donald Trump comes to Capitol Hill today with the same mission of dismantling our democracy. But make no mistake — Trump has already cemented his legacy of shame in our hallowed halls.” In recent months, GOP lawmakers who are willing to break publicly with Trump have become the exception rather than the rule. Like McConnell, most of them have endorsed Trump, even those who had been openly critical of him or had endorsed others for president.
For Sen. Bill Cassidy (R., La.), who voted to convict Trump of inciting insurrection after January 6, reality had set in. He said he would try to attend the meeting with Trump, schedule permitting.
“The polls say he’s going to be our next president, so you’ve gotta work with him,” Cassidy said.
Many national and state surveys show Trump leading Biden in a tight race.
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