Trump meets with Republicans on Capitol Hill as GOP struggles to agree on legislative strategy
The Hindu
President-elect Trump meets with GOP leaders to strategize on legislative priorities, facing challenges and opportunities in Washington.
President-elect Donald Trump is meeting privately on Capitol Hill late on Wednesday (January 8, 2025) with Republican senators as House and Senate GOP leaders are straining to come up with a strategy for tackling his legislative priorities as the party takes power in Washington.
Mr. Trump said it “feels great” to be back inside the U.S. Capitol for the first time since he left office four years ago, after the January 6, 2021, riot by his supporters. With his wife, Melania, he also paid tribute to the late President Jimmy Carter lying in state in the Rotunda ahead of funeral services Thursday.
With Mr. Trump taking the oath of office on January 20, Republicans have no time to waste.
“We're looking at the one bill versus two bills, and whatever it is, it doesn't matter," Mr. Trump said about the conflicting strategies as he arrived. "We're going to get the result.”
Mr. Trump's return to Capitol Hill marked a changed era in Washington as he strode through the corridors where four years ago a mob of his supporters had laid siege to the US Capitol as senators fled to safety in a failed attempt to salvage Mr. Trump's election defeat to President Joe Biden.
Inside the lengthy meeting, Mr. Trump received applause and bursts of laughter from the Republican senators staying late into the evening to confer with him behind closed doors. The session stretched past an hour. He also met with Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., and is also expected to huddle over the weekend with House GOP lawmakers at his private club Mar-a-Lago.
Political capital is almost always at its peak at the start of a new Presidential term, even more so because this is Trump's second and he is prevented under the Constitution from a third. Moving swiftly is all the more important because the GOP majorities are slim, particularly in the House, where House Speaker Mike Johnson can't afford to lose hardly any votes.
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