President Donald Trump's agenda has seemingly stalled five months ahead of the midterm elections, according to a pair of congressional reporters, and he's not doing himself any favors in the time he's got left with Republican majorities.
A growing coalition of Republican senators is breaking ranks with the 79-year-old president in a narrowly divided Senate after engineering the defeats of Sens. Bill Cassidy (R-LA) and John Cornyn (R-TX), and Punchbowl's Andrew Desiderio told "CNN News Central" that Trump has hurt himself in other ways.
"Look, this is immigration enforcement funding, this is something that unites Republicans," Desiderio said. "It's a key agenda item of the president. It was on a glide path until, of course, this quote, unquote anti-weaponization fund was created as a result of that settlement from the president's lawsuit against the IRS for the unauthorized leak of his tax returns, and Republicans are at a moment right now where they're dealing with not only an unpopular president, but an unpopular president who continues to knock off some of their own colleagues. I'm referring, of course, to Sens. Bill Cassidy of Louisiana and John Cornyn of Texas, and in the case of Sen. Cornyn, you know, leaving Republicans with a flawed candidate in Ken Paxton and having to spend hundreds of millions of dollars more in November just to keep a red seat red."
"So what Republicans are frustrated at, especially in the Senate, is that the president appears to be doing things that are directly against his own interests," Desiderio added, "not only stalling his own legislative agenda, but making it harder for Republicans to keep control of the Senate, which was supposed to be the sort of the quote, unquote, safe chamber in this midterm year."
Puck's Leigh Ann Caldwell agreed, saying that Republicans returned to Washington, D.C., in a foul mood.
"They're coming back from their Memorial Day break, and usually when members go home things cool off and they come back and they're in better moods," Caldwell said. "That is not the case this time. They are extremely frustrated with this White House, especially since while they were gone, their friend and their colleague John Cornyn was defeated by Ken Paxton, and it just really poured more salt in these wounds."
"They're having a moment where they're having to figure out how they work with or sometimes against a president to preserve their own political interests, because they finally realized after all of these years that perhaps the president does not have their best interests in heart," she added. "What's notable is their past, most of these most competitive primaries, and so now they're able to act with a little bit more independence, which could they think prove more beneficial in a general election? But it's going to be a really difficult time for these Senate Republicans right now as they try to navigate a heavy-handed president."
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