WASHINGTON (AP) — The White House sits two miles from the U.S. Capitol, but this week, it might as well have been a world away.
In Congress, Republicans labored around the clock in an ultimately futile bid to overhaul the nation’s health care system. At the White House, officials labored to keep their jobs amid a highly public — and at times, shockingly vulgar — feud between President Donald Trump’s senior advisers that culminated with Friday’s firing of chief of staff Reince Priebus.
Rarely has the gap between the priorities of a president and lawmakers in his own party been so stark. By week’s end, Trump had become largely irrelevant as Republicans’ tried to fulfill a seven-year promise to voters on health care. Trump’s involvement was mainly limited to the occasional tweet. At a closed-door meeting of the House Republican caucus Friday, at least one lawmaker bemoaned the impact of the White House’s internal drama.
“That which is weird is getting weirder at the White House,” Rep. Mark Sanford, R-S.C., said after the meeting. “Let’s break through this stuff, let’s produce results. The internal White House warfare is in fact an impediment to doing so.”
The Pennsylvania Avenue divide stretched beyond the health care debacle this week. When the president issued a surprise edict-by-tweet banning transgender people from the military, several high-profile GOP senators rejected the decision. When Trump mused about firing Attorney General Jeff Sessions, Republican lawmakers quickly took Sessions’ side.
Trump’s flirtation with firing Sessions produced more blowback from Republicans than nearly any other matter this year. South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham said there would be “holy hell” to pay if Trump took that provocative step. Sen. Ben Sasse, R-Neb., said that if Trump was thinking about using a procedural move to temporarily replace Sessions without Senate confirmation, he should “forget about it.”
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