Republican lawmakers have started to adopt an unorthodox strategy to advance President Donald Trump’s agenda: “de-emphasizing” the commander in chief himself, Punchbowl News reported Friday.
In January, Trump first revealed his proposal for the Pentagon’s fiscal year 2027 budget: a record-high $1.5 trillion, a $445 billion or 42% increase over the previous year. With many Democrats still opposed to the massive military budget, Republicans have increasingly tried to separate the president from his own request as they push to pass it.
“It’s not about Donald Trump,” said Sen. Jim Banks (R-IN), Punchbowl News reported. “It’s about our troops and supporting our military. And these Democrats are playing games.”
Republicans’ new strategy comes as a growing number of GOP lawmakers have moved to distance themselves from Trump amid the president’s cratering approval ratings as the midterms fast approach. This month, multiple GOP lawmakers have explicitly come out against Trump’s deeply unpopular war against Iran in calling for it to come to an “immediate end.”
“All I know is I’m supporting the $1.5 trillion budget request. It’s not a Trump thing. It’s not a Republican thing [or] a Democrat thing,” said Sen. Tim Sheehy (R-MT) on Thursday after a briefing of the Armed Services Committee, according to Punchbowl News.
The new strategy, however, appears unlikely to work, argued Punchbowl News’ Briana Reilly and Anthony Adragna.
“Democrats aren’t likely to separate the two, though. Trump took the defense world by surprise when he first called for $1.5 trillion in Pentagon spending via Truth Social eight months ago, setting off an administration scramble to fill out that topline — and articulate a strategy for realizing it,” Reilly and Adragna wrote.
“And Trump’s military actions across the globe have only enraged Democrats, who see pending congressional action on DOD spending as one of the only ways they can protest, and potentially alter, the course of the U.S. war against Iran.”