While far-right MAGA has taken over the Republican Party sidelining traditional conservatives, Trump’s second White House residency won’t be assuredly stress-free, and that’s just due to clashing priorities in his party’s ranks, let alone salvos from outside.
Case in point, President-elect Donald Trump not waiting to be officially seated cracked the whip on Capitol Hill, but he suffered an embarrassing defeat in the hands of his very own party’s House crew.
Democratic and Republican lawmakers had reached a bipartisan House spending bill that would keep the federal government operating until March 2025. But Trump campaign financier Elon Musk unleashed a tweet barrage against the proposed legislation because it did not include raising the federal debt ceiling to fund Trump’s promised tax cuts for the wealthy.
Aloof at first, Trump took the cue from Musk and rushed an alternative bill that included lifting the debt ceiling, realizing that he wanted it done during Biden’s term so that he wouldn’t be blamed by tight-fisted supporters for later raising it.
But consternation — 38 Republican small-government, debt-hating diehards soundly voted down the Trump-Musk alternative. The House then passed a bipartisan bill without a debt ceiling proviso. Both the Senate and President Biden okayed it, averting a government shutdown.
Score: House Republicans: 1, Trump and Musk: 0; this despite the Trump camp’s fierce threats to range future primary challengers against current GOP lawmakers who don’t do his bidding.
Egg on face, Elon’s shadow
Not only did the president-elect get egg on his face, but he must now convince his own party’s anti-spending, anti-debt hawks to support more government borrowing to fill in for his promised huge tax cuts when he takes office in January. Good luck with that.
To make the loss even more humiliating, social media erupted with taunts that it’s “unelected US President Musk” who calls the shots. Memes have also depicted Trump as the billionaire’s valet. It must rile the narcissist who hates being overshadowed by anyone. Socialists have long argued that the state is just the executive committee of big capitalists, and here’s the world’s richest man blatantly proving the point.
Democratic opposition aside, serious fractures within the GOP over key issues could entangle Trump who, despite his overblown claims to a big electoral mandate, must navigate the slimmest House majority in history: only 5 GOP seats. The party’s majority in the Senate is narrow too: just 6 seats, with incoming Vice President JD Vance as tie-breaker.
GOP tariff naysayers
Some Republicans in the House and Senate are already pushing back on Trump’s “America First” obsession with tariffs on imports, which many in the party believe would only raise prices for domestic consumers.
Openly rejecting his threat to levy a 5% monthly tariff on Mexico unless it stiffens the border, early GOP naysayers, including Senators Joni Ernst (Iowa) and Thom Tillis (N.C.), warned that they would raise a veto-proof majority if the president-elect pushes for a national emergency to implement his tariffs.
As for Trump’s plan to impose a 60-percent levy on Chinese products; it’s bound to clash with “Second President” Musk’s druthers. Musk’s Tesla is the only foreign car maker that has a factory in China without a local joint venture; it has a battery plant and makes self-driving vehicle technology there, according to a CNBC report. A stiff tariff on “Made-in-China” would be painful to Trump’s government-efficiency guru.
Immigration conundrum
Just how Trump can keep his promise to deport 20 million undocumented immigrants “from Day One” won’t be easy either, and it’s not just an issue of implementation logistics.
The deportations would seriously slash the bottom lines of US industries that rely on 6 million undocumented workers, a quarter of whom are employed by construction and agribusiness companies. These industries also happen to be huge campaign donors that have long mostly given to Republican candidates.
Sixty-eight-percent of construction’s donations in 2024 went to GOP candidates; $41 million of agribusiness handouts went to Republicans too (Democrats got only $18 million), according to the Center for Responsive Politics. Trump himself got $3 million from construction and agribusiness, the largest amount these sectors donated by to any candidate for president or Congress.
So, just how is Trump going to deal with blowback from members of his own party who suck from the teats of industries heavily dependent on undocumented immigrant workforces? How will he assuage his xenophobic MAGA base should his actions in office not match his poisonous anti-immigration campaign rhetoric and promises?
The Trump 2.0 pilot featuring his pre-inauguration defeat in the hands of his own party’s lawmakers hints that while he successfully rode the MAGA tiger to his second presidency, he could emerge badly mauled by it. Watch for the next episodes. – Rappler.com
Rene Ciria Cruz is an editor at PositivelyFilipino.com. He edited the book A Time to Rise: Collective Memoirs of the Union of Democratic Filipinos (KDP), (UP Press), and was Inquirer.net’s US Bureau Chief 2013-2023. He has written for the San Francisco Examiner, San Francisco Chronicle, Pacific News Service, and California Lawyer Magazine.
The views expressed by the writer are his/her own and do not necessarily reflect the views or positions of Rappler.
