Jake Sherman - The Hill to Die on: The Battle for Congress and the Future of Trump’s America

Hey, President Donald Trump said as we walked out of the Oval Office. If youre a bestseller, you better give me some.

It seemed like a throwaway line, what the president saw as good-natured ribbing after an interview about his relationship with Congress. But after nearly two years of his presidency, it also seemed like the most satisfying and fitting encapsulation of Washington in the era of Donald John Trump: Everything was about him. A city filled with more than five hundred hard-charging, ambitious politicians swayed with his moods. His idiosyncrasies and policy preferences sent markets soaring to new heights, then yanked them back to earth. His election broke up friendships, frayed or ended marriages, and tested the resilience of American democracy.

Eventually, after 728 days, Trumps Republican Washington was shattered. The power structures that propped him up and the robust majority that helped him govern were broken beyond recognition.

When all was said and done, there was no ambiguity: Republicans defeat in the 2018 midterm elections was absolutely astounding and bordered on historic. The party lost deep-red districts in places like Oklahoma, Texas, and Virginia; it was decimated in California and walloped in Michigan. The election ended careers of promising up-and-comers and reinstalled Nancy Pelosi atop the Democratic House of Representatives.

But if you listened to Trump, it was all according to plan.

I [say] this, and everyone says, Oh, its just talk, sour grapes, Trump said, wearing a blue suit, red tie, and crisp white shirt, with 45 stitched into the shirtsleeve, speaking from behind the Resolute Desk in the Oval Office. Lets assume we held the House, and lets assume I held it by one or two or three. It doesnt matteror five. I would have never been able to get, rarely at least, the Republicans to put anything forward because you would always have somebody blocking what the Republican leadership wanted to do.

This was Donald Trump explaining why he was at least somewhat pleased that his party no longer held the majority of the House of Representatives, an institution Republicans spent nearly a half-billion dollars trying to save between 2016 and 2018.

Trump thought if Republicans had kept the majority, it wouldve been impossible to get anything done because every time he tried, people would look to exact changes and concessions. Some might have said that kind of horsetrading was part of the complex and messy legislative process that the founders designed. Trump saw it as superfluous and cumbersome.

In Trumps thinking, a Democratic House majority was welcome, even freeing. Now, I just say Hey, folks, lets go. Give me legislation. Let me see. And if we like it, well work on it, he said.

One of the many paradoxes of Donald Trump was that he demanded backbreaking loyalty from his party but showed almost none in exchange. The president cut deals with Democrats in front of Republicans faces. At times he or his staff ignored the will of his partys leaders. He sometimes even took pleasure in his partys defeats. George W. Bush had humbly called his electoral defeat in 2006 a thumpin. Barack Obama called his in 2010 a shellacking. But when voters tossed Speaker Paul Ryans Republican Party to the side, the presidentspeaking during a news conference at the White Houseassailed those who lost. Mia Love gave me no love, and she lost. Too bad. Sorry about that, Mia, said Trump, clearly not sorry after Love spent $5 million trying to overcome her partys tarnished image in deep-red Utah.