Republicans rebuke Trump over government shutdown threat

President Donald Trump picked a new fight on Thursday with his fellow Republicans, saying congressional leaders could have avoided a “mess” over raising the USA debt ceiling if they had taken his advice.

During his campaign, Donald Trump tossed off most of the party establishment, insulting and belittling the Bushes, Romneys and other blue bloods who had for decades provided Republicans with leadership and funding.

But if Trump is looking to get into a public fight with McConnell, the majority leader has not been engaging. What’s the relationship like right now?

It will be a greatly noticed bit of irony if, in voting for Trump to save the judiciary, the GOP actually loses it with a frozen court to a Democrat President in 2021.

I’m not going to spend a whole lot of ink on the possibility of a shutdown because, well, it’s not happening. Instead, they’ll rely on House and Senate tax-writing committees to solve the big questions that remain unanswered, according to two people familiar with the matter. He made clear that matters wouldn’t necessarily come to a head on September 30, when the fiscal year ends, suggesting that some sort of stopgap bill would be passed while the House and Senate worked out their spending differences. And McConnell is just frustrated by a president who does not yet seem to have figured out a way to work with Congress.

“I personally don’t think you can make a deal without a termination, but we’re going to see what happens, OK?”

Two endorsements on syndicated conservative talk radio aren’t likely to have a huge impact on an election nearly a year away, but they are a marked shift in the far-right’s willingness to publicly challenge figures who are supported by Senate leaders like Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and the chair of the National Republican Senatorial Committee Cory Gardner, both of whom have publicly backed Flake. How unusual is that?

If you’re saying to yourself, “Trump would never do that to his own party”, stop and look back at the last two years.

Trump has been publicly shaming Flake for a week straight. It was a clear reference to Flake, who supported efforts to reform federal immigration law and the federal criminal justice system. He has flirted with the idea of supporting someone else. It reminded their voters of who was still in charge in Washington (President Barack Obama, a Democrat) and made the country, largely, forget about how Republican majorities in the House and Senate were responsible for the shutdown.

The GOP already has trouble keeping aboard its moderate senators Susan Collins of Maine, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska and a few others. The lesson so far is, it just doesn’t work.

SHAPIRO:.Is pretty extraordinary for a man in the Oval Office.

McConnell did not take a stand on the border wall issue on Wednesday.

Republicans desperate for a major legislative victory under the new president also want to rewrite the tax code and improve American infrastructure – making for a hefty autumn workload on Capitol Hill.

Now, the threat of a shutdown less than six weeks from now will weigh heavily on the negotiations. The majority Republicans will need the minority party’s votes to keep the government open.

But now, as Trump threatens to shut down the USA government if Congress does not provide the funding to get started on the roughly $25 billion wall, critics wonder what happened to that promise or if Trump ever really meant to make Mexico pay.

Ryan, speaking to Boeing employees in suburban Seattle, said he and Trump have “different speaking styles” but are in “constant contact” on the policy agenda.