President Donald Trump has been in office for less than three weeks, but he’s already making his mark on Washington at an unprecedented pace. He is boldly reshaping the federal government in ways that have excited some of his supporters but which experts warn are illegal, dangerous and unconstitutional. He also recently met with House Republicans at one of his golf clubs in Florida to plan how to push his agenda forward through Congress.
Watch the video above as Straight Arrow News contributor Newt Gingrich explains why Trump is moving so fast on policy and why he thinks working with Congress is the right move, comparing Trump’s leadership style to that of an entrepreneur rather than a traditional government leader.
The following is an excerpt from the above video:
He knows he can’t get the biggest parts of his agenda into permanent law without the Congress, and he knows that as many things as he can sign [with] his executive orders, they can be turned around by the next president, but if you can get him into law, you have a much better chance of them surviving and shaping America’s future. And to get them into law, he needs the absolute support of the House Republicans, and he needs the help that he’s going to have to have from the Senate Republicans.
So I thought it was very significant that he took the kind of time he did, talked as thoroughly as he did. And there were some very revealing moments. One was a long conversation about tariffs. He may have been the first American president in general in a century to talk about President McKinley, and McKinley had been the author of a tariffs act in the 1890s. It was the base of his campaign in 1896, and he advocated that if we had higher tariffs, we’d have better industry, our workers would be paid more, and for almost 100 years that was the model that had made America great.
Trump got it. He’s learned it, and I think it’s important how much time he spent on it, so we’ll keep reporting and watching, but a lot’s going to be happening.