Donald Trump popped into Washington, D.C. on Thursday with dreams of capturing GOP congressional hearts. Well, perhaps. The trip was meant to be a peacekeeping one, as Trump desperately needs to portray an outward portrait of Republican unity. Otherwise, Hillary Clinton could keep on scooping up Bernie Sanders supporters with her debt-free college plan, and Trump would have to go back to real estate mogul-ing. He must have managed to convince Ted Cruz of something, for Cruz is now “happy” to speak at Trump’s convention. As for the others, the reality star didn’t fare so well.
The New York Times reports that Trump entered into battle with several members of the Republican establishment, who are mighty embarrassed at his continued marginalizing rhetoric. The group was reportedly upset that Trump won’t start acting more presidential and get serious about defeating Clinton on policy points. Instead, he simply insults her, which is precisely what he shouldn’t do if he wants to win over enemies. The paper also reports that Trump went pretty ballistic at the first hint of criticism:
A peacemaking summit meeting between Republican lawmakers and their renegade presidential nominee, Donald J. Trump, descended on Thursday into an extraordinary series of acrid exchanges, punctuated by Mr. Trump’s threatening one Republican senator and deriding another as a “loser.” His private meeting Thursday with 41 Senate Republicans, including some who have publicly criticized him repeatedly, grew acidly contentious, according to multiple lawmakers and other people present who insisted on anonymity to candidly recount the proceedings.
Mr. Trump at one point jabbed at Senator Ben Sasse of Nebraska, who has openly called for a third-party candidate to thwart Mr. Trump’s chances, asking Mr. Sasse rhetorically if he preferred to have Mrs. Clinton as president.
Sad! After all the finger jabbing, things got even more entertaining when Trump told one lawmaker that there’d be no more Mr. Nice Trump, so say goodbye to reelection this year. The bemused politico informed Trump that he wasn’t even on ballots this November. Trump then moved on to bragging about his fine primary season performance, but Sasse started calling this election a “dumpster fire,” which means that senators are just like us.
We should have realized that Trump would break out his love for saying “loser” on Capitol Hill. If Trump manages to become president, this will turn every potential bargaining session between the executive and legislative branches into a mudfight. C-SPAN would officially turn into a reality show.
(Via New York Times)