A double challenge is putting Trump's credibility on the line

Egypt Independent

19-05-2025

CNN — Donald Trump this week faces two challenges — one at home and the other abroad — that will test his self-crafted mythology as a master dealmaker and his capacity to achieve real and enduring change.
The president is heaping pressure on the brittle Republican House majority to overcome internal divides to pass the 'big, beautiful bill' that contains his top domestic priorities. And his so-far failed effort to bring peace to Ukraine will reach a new pivot point during a telephone call Monday with Russian President Vladimir Putin, who has snubbed Trump's initiative despite the administration's deferential treatment.
Trump's spending bill is his best chance to transform the country — at least using conventional and constitutional means — because changing the law will be more enduring than his blitz of executive orders. He means to cut taxes, fund his mass deportation plans and add tens of billions of dollars to defense spending.
But steep cuts to Medicaid and food assistance demanded by fiscal conservatives are alienating more moderate Republicans on whose seats the GOP majority depends. The fight therefore cuts right along the fault lines of the Trump coalition and could require a more forceful presidential intervention later this week.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, center, meets with US Vice President JD Vance and Secretary of State Marco Rubio in Rome on May 18, 2025.
Ukrainian Presidential Press Service via Reuters
The world may soon learn about the extent of Trump's sincerity in Ukraine initiative
It's also a crunch time for a peace plan in Ukraine that promised everything but has so far delivered very little.
Even Trump has considered whether Putin is stringing him along in a peace effort that has so far consisted mainly of the new US administration squeezing the victim of the war — Ukraine — and choreographing the process to reward the aggressor.
After Putin snubbed a proposed summit in Turkey last week that Trump all but ordered Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to agree to attend, the US president declared that there'd be no progress until he personally sat down with the Russian leader, who launched an unprovoked and illegal invasion three years ago.
Monday's planned call will therefore be the most serious examination of Trump's credibility and sincerity in the Ukraine negotiations, as well as his willingness to impose even the slightest pressure on Russia.
There have been signs recently that the White House is growing frustrated.
Vice President JD Vance, who berated Zelensky in the Oval Office in February, met the Ukrainian leader in Rome over the weekend, days after warning that Russia is 'asking for too much.'
Trump's belief that only he can influence Putin — a trait he shares with several previous presidents — could be exposed if Moscow doesn't budge.
'If he can't do it, then nobody can,' Trump's envoy Steve Witkoff said Sunday on ABC News' 'This Week.' But this is a questionable premise: The president has often excused Putin over his recalcitrance and vouched for his commitment to peace despite murderous attacks on Ukrainian civilians. And Witkoff has sometimes emerged from meetings with Putin reinforcing Russia's position.
Still, at this point, with negotiations going nowhere, there may be merit in testing Trump's claim that he can make a difference. Putin could be wary, for instance, of defying the US president to his face. If Trump turned hints on new sanctions into real threats, he might narrow Russia's options. He could change Putin's calculations further were he to offer new weapons shipments to Kyiv.
Still, the idea that Putin, for whom the conflict may be existential, will suddenly fold because of Trump's magnetism is far-fetched. Even an agreement for the formal presidential summit that Trump has long craved would likely be the precursor to a lengthy process during which Russia would continue to fight.
A confrontation boils inside the House GOP
Trump's big, beautiful bill is an attempt to enshrine sharp changes in the direction of government policy.
It includes at least $1.5 trillion in spending cuts to pay for extending his first-term tax cuts and to expand it to cover promises he made on the campaign trail, including exempting income from tips and overtime pay and raising standard deductions. The bill would catalyze a shipbuilding program amid an escalating rivalry with China and make a down payment on a space-based 'Golden Dome' anti-missile shield. The stressed air traffic control system would get billions of dollars for upgrades. And the legislation throws cash at border security and detention facilities to prop up Trump's hardline immigration plan.
But the bill will exact a heavy cost — one that will complicate its prospects even if it passes the full House this week and will contour the political climate ahead of 2026 midterm elections.
It imposes spending reductions and new limitations on Medicaid and federal food assistance. And some analysts warn that whatever most taxpayers gain from tax breaks, they will have already lost from price increases caused by Trump's tariff wars.
House Speaker Mike Johnson speaks to reporters at the Capitol on May 15, 2025.Johnson's credibility is on the line alongside Trump's
The implications of the legislation are weighing on House Speaker Mike Johnson's tiny House majority and led to emotional confrontations in committee after months of grueling negotiations.
Johnson forged a workaround to appease hardliners and managed to force the bill through the House Budget Committee on Sunday night after a tense weekend of negotiations. But the measure must pass other key hurdles this week ahead of a vote in the full House. And every step taken to ease its path in the House could make it harder to pass the Senate. And Democrats say tougher Medicaid requirements mean Trump broke pledges to working Americans. History suggests that the documentation process Medicaid recipients must go through to certify work requirements could also lead to eligible recipients losing coverage.
Changes made to please conservatives could also anger more moderate members whose seats depend on swing voters and who also want adjustments to protect a cap on deductions of state and local taxes.
Trump has largely been willing to trust Johnson to enact his agenda. Still, he can be expected to crank up pressure on holdouts from either wing of the party as he wants a big bill to sign by the July 4 holiday — a hugely ambitious timeline.
The president's patience is limited: 'We don't need 'GRANDSTANDERS' in the Republican Party. STOP TALKING, AND GET IT DONE!' he warned on Truth Social last week. Trump's hold on the GOP grassroots means he can lean on GOP lawmakers who must answer to MAGA supporters at home. And during the confirmation process for controversial Cabinet nominees, he showed his willingness to unleash pressure campaigns by pro-Trump media personalities.
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent appears on CNN's 'State of the Union' Sunday, May 18, 2025.
CNN
Bessent defends the bill on CNN
Some provisions of the bill, including big tax cuts and a hike in defense spending, have raised concerns that it would worsen the nation's fiscal situation, which Trump repeatedly insists he is trying to fix. The Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget found that the bill, if passed in its current form, would add between $3.3 trillion and $5.2 trillion to the national debt over the next decade. And critics point out that Trump's first-term tax cuts sent deficits booming.
But Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said on 'State of the Union' on Sunday that the bill would create sufficient economic activity to defuse such concerns. 'There is the growth, the potential growth of the debt. But what's more important is that we grow the economy faster,' Bessent told CNN's Jake Tapper. 'And so, we are going to grow the GDP faster than the debt grows, and that will stabilize the debt-to-GDP.'
Democrats, grappling for an effective attack on the new administration, are seizing on Medicaid cuts, which they claim will benefit the wealthiest Americans.
'There is nothing wrong with us bringing the government in balance,' South Carolina Democratic Rep. James Clyburn told Tapper. 'But there is a problem when that balance comes on the back of working men and women. And that's what is happening here.'
Connecticut Sen. Chris Murphy blasted the bill as an 'absolute disaster' that would deprive the neediest Americans of health care. 'We're standing in the way of … the most massive transfer of wealth from the poor and the middle class to the rich in the history of the country,' he said on NBC's 'Meet the Press.'
Still, since Republicans control both chambers of Congress, Democrats have little power to halt the legislation — even if it might provide a base for their future campaigns.
The internal dynamics of the Washington GOP might be complex, but they pale in comparison to the task that Trump faces with Putin — who, unlike Republican lawmakers, has no real incentive to make the president look good.
But Witkoff insisted on ABC that Trump was equal to the task, pointing to 'the art, the elegance' of his dealmaking. 'The president is the master at this. … I've said many times that I follow his tactics because they work.'
Yet early in Trump's new term, there is not much evidence in his so-far fruitless peace brokering in the Middle East or Ukraine to support the administration's incessant puffing up of the president. And until the 'big, beautiful bill' lands on his desk, his legislative record is looking as unimpressive as it did during his first term.