Trump sees winning hand as critics say otherwise

Bloomberg

Donald Trump is coming off one of his roughest weeks as president, at least in his critics’ eyes — instigating a government shutdown fight, provoking his defense chief’s resignation, abruptly pulling US troops from two global hotspots, and even thinking about firing the head of the US central bank.
Yet, as hard as it is for the outside world to comprehend, the president and his advisers think all that upheaval adds up to a winning hand.
By digging in on his threat to shut down the government to try to force Congress to fund his border wall on the southern US border, and by drawing down military commitments in Syria and Afghanistan in line with
his “America First” doctrine, Trump’s satisfying the demands of his most dedicated supporters — and he knows they’re the only ones who can get him back to the presidency, said advisers inside and outside the White House. To Trump, it’s merely an extension of his 2020 re-election mantra: Promises made. Promises kept.
“President Trump believes one of his strengths is he is actually doing the things he told people he would do,” said Marc Lotter, a member of Trump’s 2020 advisory committee and former spokesman for Vice President Mike Pence. “One of the reasons why the president was elected was because we have had politicians of both parties for many, many years saying one thing on the trail, in the commercials and from the podium, and doing another.”
In one way, Trump is right. Activist Republican voters, who can punish GOP lawmakers not viewed as sufficiently loyal to Trump, are also his surest line
of defense as Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation moves closer.
Should the incoming Democratic-controlled House impeach Trump — a threat many around Trump consider very real — he could survive and remain in office as long as at least 34 Republican senators stick with him. Democrat Bill Clinton survived the last impeachment in just this way.
Yet even some of Trump’s allies now seem unnerved. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, who rarely criticises the president in public, said he was “particularly distressed” by Defense Secretary James Mattis’s departure.
Republican Representative Dennis Ross of Florida said he and his GOP colleagues are growing increasingly anxious. “Whether it be defense or monetary policy, we want to see some stability,” Ross said.
A sense of disarray in Washington as the federal shutdown neared contributed to a rout in the stock market. The Dow Jones Industrial Average had its worst week since the 2008 financial crisis, and the technology-heavy Nasdaq Composite plunged into a bear market.
And that was all before a Bloomberg News report that Trump was talking openly to advisers about firing Jerome Powell, the head of the nation’s central bank — whose independence from the president is a bedrock feature of the US financial system. Negative reaction from senior Republicans was swift and intense, with
Republican Senator Richard Shelby warning Trump to “be very careful.”
Trump has made clear in public comments and tweets that he believes Powell is hurting the US economy and contributing to stock market losses — two things that need to be strong to improve Trump’s re-election chances. He had to back down. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin posted a pair of tweets quoting Trump as not only denying any plan to fire Powell but disavowing authority to do so.