Trump tries out for unexpected role: GOP mediator

Former President Donald Trump is set to receive the Republican nomination for the third time, but he may be assuming a new role he has never played before: peacekeeper in his own party.

As the House voted overwhelmingly to table a motion to oust Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA), Trump issued a statement praising both the chamber’s top Republican and the GOP lawmaker who led the charge to topple him.

“I absolutely love Marjorie Taylor Greene,” Trump posted on his social media platform, applauding the Georgia Republican’s “spirit” and “fight.” But “with a majority of One, shortly growing to three or four,” the House GOP needs to fight Democrats instead.

“Mike Johnson is a good man who is trying very hard,” Trump continued, adding that he was against the motion to vacate, at least for now.

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Trump pointed to Republican prospects in November, including his own rematch with President Joe Biden, in advising Republicans to hold their fire.

The former president has good reason to want to tamp down Republican infighting of the sort he has often encouraged during his tumultuous political career. It doesn’t help Trump get back in the White House.

It was also clear that there was little appetite in either party for another prolonged speakership fight. It took weeks to elect Johnson after former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy was removed. McCarthy needed 15 ballots to secure the gavel once the new Republican majority was seated at the beginning of last year.

Trump didn’t need to lead this process. The rank and file was, for the most part, already there.

But Trump has aligned with House conservative rebels in the past. He still said similar things about Johnson’s speakership last month.

“Well, look, we have a majority of one, OK?” Trump told reporters. “It’s not like he can go and do whatever he wants to do. I think he’s a very good person. You know, he stood very strongly with me on NATO. … I think he’s trying very hard.”

People have waited in vain for Trump to embrace a party leadership role or a more presidential temperament. Wednesday’s cautious advice to Republicans, offered when Johnson looked safe, will soon be followed by another all-caps rant or a complaint that a television personality “looks like s***.”

Former President Barack Obama painted Trump as a pragmatist after the 2016 election. “He is coming into this office with fewer set-hard-and-fast policy prescriptions than other presidents,” Obama said of his successor. “I don’t think he is ideological. I think, ultimately, he is pragmatic. And that can serve him well, as long as he’s got good people around him.”

Obama likely does not think much of the people who surrounded Trump for the next few years, nor would he describe the first term as a pragmatic period of time. And sometimes, when Trump sought to be pragmatic, such as with his early pandemic response when he initially largely deferred to public health officials, it arguably got him in trouble.

But we have seen some examples of Trump pragmatism in the 2024 campaign. He has encouraged Republicans not to get too far ahead of public opinion on abortion since the reversal of Roe v. Wade, for which he takes credit.

“I have to tell you from a conservative and Republican standpoint, you have to learn how to talk about pro-life, you have to learn how to talk about that decision,” Trump said last year in what has become a standard part of his stump speech. “Because you don’t know how to talk about it.”

“Like President Ronald Reagan before me, I support the three exceptions, for rape, incest, and the life of the mother,” Trump told Republicans in Alabama. “In terms of running, you have to go with your heart; you have to go with what you want. But to me, the three exceptions are very important, I think to a large portion of people on this issue are very important.”

Trump telling Republicans to follow their hearts is an acknowledgment that some in the party are to his right on abortion, though he did attack episodic ally Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) for disagreeing with him about federal legislation on the issue.

In this year’s Senate races, Trump has also worked much more in concert with the party establishment on candidate endorsements than he did in the midterm elections.

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Often transactional, Trump has at least partially mended fences with intraparty rivals like Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL) and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY), who have both endorsed him. One big exception is former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley, who continues to rack up thousands of votes in Republican primaries after dropping out and just broke 20% of the vote against him in Indiana on Tuesday.

“I’ve never seen the Republican Party so unified as it is right now,” Trump said after beating Haley in her home state earlier this year. Perhaps he can use The Power of Positive Thinking to will it into being true.