President Donald Trump was “heavily engaged” in Republicans’ budget reconciliation process at every step and a big player in an endgame “full-court press,” according to sources. But he left it to GOP leaders and his vice president to twist the arm of one key Senate holdout.
As a group of conservative holdouts left the House frozen overnight into the wee hours of Thursday morning, Trump worked the phones to sell those members on his executive power to implement Senate-crafted provisions to be more in line with their priorities. And when he’d had enough, the president who still maintains a vise grip on his party used two social media posts to issue his final marching orders for the stragglers to fall in line.
“FOR REPUBLICANS, THIS SHOULD BE AN EASY YES VOTE. RIDICULOUS!!!” he wrote in one post. That followed an earlier dispatch in which Trump warned the holdouts that “MAGA IS NOT HAPPY, AND IT’S COSTING YOU VOTES!!!”
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