Donald Trump charmed Senate Republicans during a meeting Wednesday night with a laissez-faire offensive.
While the president-elect doubled down on his desire for Congress to present him with “one big, beautiful bill” to implement his immigration, tax and other initiatives, he also left senators with the impression that he’s allowing them to do their jobs.
“It was a really good meeting, very strong, and we’ll get something done,” Trump told reporters when he left a more than 90-minute meeting in the Capitol. “One bill, two bills, doesn’t matter to me. They’re going to work that out, but the end result is going to be the same.”
Top GOP lawmakers in the upper chamber, including the new Senate majority leader, John Thune, have advocated for a two-bill strategy to accomplish bypassing the filibuster to tackle key parts of Trump’s legislative agenda. But Wednesday night, that hardly seemed to matter.
“Looking forward to having him back here when he’s sworn in on January 20th,” Thune told reporters. “He had a lot of opportunity to interact with members of our conference. Our conference is united on his agenda.”
Trump has largely sided with House Speaker Mike Johnson on his push to advance Trump’s winning campaign message all in one fell swoop.
“I think it could go either way, but I think that the momentum seems to be towards one coming from the House,” Sen. Rand Paul told reporters Wednesday night.
But the president-elect made it clear to senators advocating for a two-step approach that he’s open to shifting gears.
“We’re looking at the one bill versus two bills, and whatever it is doesn’t matter,” Trump said earlier in the evening as he passed reporters on his way to the Capitol Rotunda to pay his respects to the late former President Jimmy Carter. “We’re going to get the result and we’re going to make America great again.”
Trump’s meeting with Republicans in the Senate came just 13 days before his inauguration and comeback parade down Pennsylvania Avenue. The former and incoming president is trying to capitalize on his party’s trifecta of power over both chambers of Congress and the White House, where the Trumps will return on Jan. 20 after a four-year MAGA hiatus.
He’s hosting multiple parties at Mar-a-Lago late this week in an effort to woo and tame warring factions, from the far-right, incendiary House Freedom Caucus to pragmatic committee chairs and GOP moderates in the House.
The president-elect also invited Republican senators down to his West Palm Beach club and home to further hash out a legislative path forward on the Trump agenda, a source in the room told the Daily Beast. But no date on that party has been decided.
Trump and Vice President-elect JD Vance, who is still a senator until noon on Jan. 20, entered the meeting with GOP senators Wednesday evening to what the Trump team described as “thunderous applause.”
Before the meeting, Trump and his wife, Melania, paid their respects to Carter as he lies in state in the U.S. Capitol Rotunda until Thursday, when the public commemoration pivots to the National Cathedral for his state funeral.
“I came here for the funeral tomorrow. We went over to Blair House. I went over with the first lady and met the Carter family, Trump added following the meeting. ”They were lovely. They were really, very sad. But also, there was celebrating cause he was a very fine man. I know him a little bit, but I knew him only as a fine man."
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