Andy Puzder, President-elect Donald Trump’s choice to be labor secretary, “has voiced second thoughts in recent days, because of a relentless barrage of criticism from Democrats, labor unions and other liberal groups,” sources tell CNN.
Said one GOP source: “He may be bailing. He is not into the pounding he is taking, and the paperwork.”
Politico: “Since the election, Paul Ryan has accommodated and deferred to Donald Trump on all sorts of issues they don’t see eye-to-eye on. But when it comes to Ryan’s career-defining cause — overhauling Medicare and other entitlements — the speaker has held his ground. The clashing philosophies between the GOP’s two top pols — Trump once called Ryan’s doctrine ‘political suicide’ — is about to come to a head. Left unresolved, it threatens to sink tax reform, a top priority for both men.”
Meanwhile, Ryan told Mike Allen in a phone interview that he wants to “have more conversations about” Trump’s plan to confront drug companies over their pricing, forcing them to compete for government business.
President-elect Donald Trump “criticized a cornerstone of House Republicans’ corporate-tax plan, which they had pitched as an alternative to his proposed import tariffs, creating another point of contention between the incoming president and congressional allies,” the Wall Street Journal reports.
“The measure, known as border adjustment, would tax imports and exempt exports as part of a broader plan to encourage companies to locate jobs and production in the U.S. But Mr. Trump, in his first comments on the subject, called it ‘too complicated.'”
Playbook: “Put simply, this complicates tax reform, the already complicated cornerstone of what’s supposed to be a unified Republican legislative agenda. Even many of the Trump loyalists can’t wrap their heads around Trump’s ‘border tax,’ which they see as punitive for corporations and consumers, not to mention a political liability. GOP opposition has been staked out pretty firmly, and we don’t think many members of Congress will back off of it.”
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Mike Allen: “Transition officials tell us they are worried about Steven Mnuchin’s readiness for his Thursday confirmation hearing to run Treasury. In early prep sessions, he came off as uneven and stiff, so extra people were brought in to help get him ready. (One spy at the transition office told me that all the suits surrounding a conference table during one of Mnuchin’s prep sessions made it look like a Fortune 500 board meeting.) And some insiders worry about how he’d react to demonstrators.”
“Democrats hope to derail at least one pick, and Mnuchin still tops the list. Insiders weren’t thrilled when he leaked word of his selection and then went on CNBC to talk about it. So it’ll be interesting to see how hard Trump fights for this one, if needed.”
“Donald Trump will become president Friday with an approval rating of just 40%, according to a new CNN/ORC Poll, the lowest of any recent president and 44 points below that of President Obama.”
“Following a tumultuous transition period, approval ratings for Trump’s handling of the transition are more than 20 points below those for any of his three most recent predecessors. Obama took the oath in 2009 with an 84% approval rating, 67% approved of Clinton’s transition as of late December 1992 and 61% approved of George W. Bush’s transition just before he took office in January 2001.”
A new ABC News-Washington Post poll finds 40% of Americans “approve of the way Trump has handled the transition, half as many as the 80% who approved of Barack Obama’s preparations to take office. Trump also far trails George W. Bush (72% transition approval), Bill Clinton (81%) and George H.W. Bush (82%) on this measure.”
David Leonhardt: “Obama leaves office as the most successful Democrat since Franklin Roosevelt. His effect on the ‘trajectory of America,’ to use his benchmark, was certainly smaller than Roosevelt’s, but is in the same league as Reagan’s. Obama did more while in office, while Reagan better protected his policy changes, thanks to Republican gains in state and congressional elections — and the victory of his chosen successor.”
“When future historians look back on today, they’re likely to come to a similar conclusion. They are also likely to believe that Obama’s vision of America was far superior to Trump’s. After all, a vast majority of Americans born in the last few decades share Obama’s vision. And history is ultimately written by the young.”
Prime Minister Theresa May says Britain will leave the EU’s single market — but will “seek greatest possible access to it” — as it exits the trade bloc, the New York Times reports.
May said she wanted Britain to be part of a customs union agreement with the other EU states, and remove as many trade barriers as possible. She did not provide details, but said she had an “open mind” on how to do it.
Ron Brownstein: “The paradox of the health-reform debate is that many of Obamacare’s key elements raised costs on younger and healthier people who generally vote Democratic as a means of limiting the financial exposure of older and sicker people, even as older whites have stampeded toward the GOP. Conversely, many of the central ideas common to the Republican replacement plans would lower costs for younger and healthier adults while exposing people with greater health needs, many of them older, to the risk of much larger out-of-pocket costs, even if it reduces the health-insurance premiums they initially pay.”
“Even some of the most unyielding conservative critics of the ACA acknowledge that the older and blue-collar whites central to the Trump-era Republican coalition could be squeezed by the GOP alternatives that soon will surely be labeled Trumpcare.”
(Bumped up from the holiday weekend.)
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“When Donald Trump walks into the White House for the first time as president on Jan. 20, his suits will be hanging in his closet, his personal photos will be displayed on perfectly placed tables, and his toothbrush will be near his favorite brand of toothpaste in his bathroom,” USA Today reports.
“And nothing can be touched until the Obamas pull out of the White House driveway for the inauguration ceremony that same day.”
“President-elect Donald Trump and congressional Republicans appear to have accomplished a feat that President Obama, with all the power at his disposal, could not in the past seven years: They have galvanized outspoken support for the Affordable Care Act,” the New York Times reports.
“People who benefit from the law are flooding Congress with testimonials. Angry consumers are confronting Republican lawmakers. And Democrats who saw the law as a political liability in recent elections have suddenly found their voice, proudly defending the law now that it is in trouble.”
“Donald Trump will take office as one of the most unpopular President-elects in recent history — and even scalpers are feeling the pain,” the New York Daily News reports.
“Some flippers, who acquired tickets to Trump’s inauguration with the intent of reselling them on the secondary market, are striking out in their efforts to peddle them and are now looking at some relatively ‘yuge’ losses.”
Washington Post: “Organizers are also expecting an unusually high number of protesters, given how divisive Trump’s victory over Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton was. And as of Monday afternoon, nearly three dozen Democratic lawmakers had said they plan to skip the festivities.”
“Donald Trump and his pick to lead the Obamacare repeal effort, Rep. Tom Price, share a vision that the current health care system needs to be completely uprooted,” Politico reports.
“But the two men have articulated wildly divergent visions for what comes next — and that’s making it hard for Hill Republicans to figure out where to start on a coherent replacement plan once Obamacare is gone.”
“Congressional Republicans are caught in between, racing to repeal Obamacare while receiving mixed signals from the incoming administration about what will replace it. Several key Republicans have already indicated Price’s approach won’t undergird the legislative process.”
New York Times: “Just days before he is sworn into office, President-elect Donald Trump has again focused his penchant for unpredictable disruption on the rest of the world. His remarks in a string of discursive and sometimes contradictory interviews have escalated tensions with China while also infuriating allies and institutions critical to America’s traditional leadership of the West.”
“No one knows where exactly he is headed — except that the one country he is not criticizing is Russia and its president, Vladimir V. Putin. For now. And that he is an enthusiastic cheerleader of Brexit and an unaffiliated Britain. For now.”
“Mr. Trump’s unpredictability is perhaps his most predictable characteristic.”
“They are some of the biggest names in the Republican national security firmament, veterans of past GOP administrations who say, if called upon by President-elect Donald Trump, they stand ready to serve their country again,” the Washington Post reports.
“But their phones aren’t ringing. Their entreaties to Trump Tower in New York have mostly gone unanswered. In Trump world, these establishment all-stars say they are ‘PNG’ — personae non gratae. Their transgression was signing one or both of two public “Never Trump” letters during the campaign, declaring they would not vote for Trump and calling his candidacy a danger to the nation.”
A new Washington Post-ABC News poll finds that 52% of those surveyed say Donald Trump’s decision to hand over control of his businesses to his adult sons and another executive “is enough” to separate his business interests from his obligations as president. A somewhat smaller share, 42%, say Trump should sell his businesses outright.
However, Trump’s continued refusal to release his tax returns continues to be an unpopular decision, with 74% of Americans saying he should make the documents public, including 53% of Republicans.
Rep. Tom Price (R-GA) “last year purchased shares in a medical device manufacturer days before introducing legislation that would have directly benefited the company, raising new ethics concerns for President-elect Donald Trump’s nominee for Health and Human Services secretary,” CNN reports.
“The new revelation is the latest example of Price trading stock in a health care firm at the same time as pursuing legislation that could impact a company’s share price. The issue has become a major liability for the congressman after The Wall Street Journal reported last month that he traded roughly $300,000 in shares over the past four years in health companies while pursuing legislation that could impact them.”
“The Democratic fissures exposed in last year’s presidential primary campaign between Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders have roared back to life, with party officials wary the split will hamper their ability to fight President-elect Donald Trump,” the Wall Street Journal reports.
An example: “There are few major issues of substance that divide DNC members and party activists, but one key sticking point is Mr. Sanders’s refusal to share his fundraising list with the DNC. Not turning over the list, which raised more than $200 million from two million donors, echoes a complaint party members had with President Barack Obama, who didn’t share his supporter list with state Democratic parties until after he won re-election in 2012.”
Taegan Goddard is the founder of Political Wire, one of the earliest and most influential political web sites. He also runs Political Job Hunt, Electoral Vote Map and the Political Dictionary.
Goddard spent more than a decade as managing director and chief operating officer of a prominent investment firm in New York City. Previously, he was a policy adviser to a U.S. Senator and Governor.
Goddard is also co-author of You Won - Now What? (Scribner, 1998), a political management book hailed by prominent journalists and politicians from both parties. In addition, Goddard's essays on politics and public policy have appeared in dozens of newspapers across the country.
Goddard earned degrees from Vassar College and Harvard University. He lives in New York with his wife and three sons.
Goddard is the owner of Goddard Media LLC.
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