Trump distances himself from GOP lawmakers to avoid blame if agenda stalls

By Philip Rucker, Sean Sullivan and Mike DeBonis August 24 at 8:15 PM

President Trump is strategically separating himself from Republicans in Congress, an extraordinary move to deflect blame if the GOP agenda continues to flounder.

Trump deepened the fissures in the party on Thursday when he accused the top two leaders on Capitol Hill of mismanaging a looming showdown over the nation’s borrowing authority. Republican lawmakers and aides responded to the president’s hostility with broadsides and warnings of their own.

Frustrated by months of relative inaction at the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue and emboldened by his urge to disrupt the status quo, Trump is testing whether his own political following will prove more potent and loyal than that of his party and its leaders in both houses of Congress.

The growing divide comes at an inopportune moment for Washington, however. In addition to having to raise the debt ceiling to avoid a fiscal crisis, Republicans face September deadlines to pass a spending bill to avert a government shutdown, as well as pressure to fulfill a key Trump campaign promise to rewrite the nation’s tax laws.

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https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/trump-distances-himself-from-gop-lawmakers-to-elude-blame-if-agenda-stalls/2017/08/24/f5ec44a8-88e1-11e7-a94f-3139abce39f5_story.html