Republicans have dealt a pair of stinging rejections to President-elect Donald Trump over the past week, a sign of how Trump’s immediate lame-duck status could limit his influence despite his enormous sway over the GOP’s most dedicated voters.
There’s little doubt Trump, like any president, remains the leader of his party, and is certain to have a mostly unified GOP rooting for him as he pushes for tax cuts for the wealthy, conservative judicial appointments and assaults on democratic norms. And there have long been limits to how far Republicans would actually go in service of a man many of them privately find ridiculous even as they lavishly praise him in public.
But the two prominent rejections in the past week ― Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis resisting Trump’s entreaties to his daughter-in-law, Lara Trump, to Florida’s open Senate seat and more than three dozen House Republicans denying his request to include a debt ceiling hike in a government funding bill ― show how Trump lacks the power to simply dictate the GOP’s behavior in either politics or government, and function as warning signs for Trump allies hoping for seamless enactment of his agenda, from his plans for a complex piece of tax legislation to his vision for trillions in spending cuts engineered by Elon Musk.
Sen. Mike Rounds (R-S.D.) told HuffPost the GOP would obviously remain by Trump’s side, but noted some of his requests ― like a debt ceiling hike ― simply aren’t feasible.
“I think he’s going to continue to lobby, and I think they respect the fact that he’s the incoming president of the United States, and they all want to have a good relationship with him, but they also know that certain things are doable and some things are not doable, and in the political process, there is no way at this stage of the game to effectively address the debt ceiling,” he said. “And so it was a matter of we do the best we can, and we’re all on the same team.”
“We want to make things work out, right?” Rounds said.
Trump’s demand that Republicans add a debt ceiling provision to their government funding bill tanked House Speaker Mike Johnson’s initial legislation, but set up a standoff that he wound up losing.
Republicans hate raising the debt ceiling, and they weren’t willing to abandon their stubborn position just because Trump wanted them to. Thirty-eight Republicans voted against the legislation that Johnson hastily assembled to placate their leader.
The president-elect even threatened to back a primary opponent against Rep. Chip Roy (R-Texas), only to see Roy openly defy him.
“My position is simple – I am not going to raise or suspend the debt ceiling (racking up more debt) without significant & real spending cuts attached to it. I’ve been negotiating to that end. No apologies,” Roy wrote on X, tagging Trump to make sure he saw.
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Trump’s embarrassing defeat at the hands of House lawmakers followed a stiff-arm by Senate Republicans, who refused to support scandal-plagued Matt Gaetz for attorney general, forcing the would-be nominee to withdraw from consideration. In that confrontation, Trump backed down even after threatening to try to go around the Senate and use recess appointments to fill his cabinet.
DeSantis’ resistance was less explicit. Lara Trump was never firmly rejected, instead withdrawing her name from consideration on Saturday night. The Washington Post reported Trump had pushed DeSantis to name her to the seat, which will become vacant when Sen. Marco Rubio is presumably confirmed as Trump’s Secretary of State. But when asked about it at a press conference earlier this month, Trump was skeptical he would get his way.
“I probably don’t, but I don’t know,” the president-elect said at Mar-a-Lago. “Ron’s doing a good job and that’s his choice. Nothing to do with me.”
Trump likely lost leverage over DeSantis when it became clear he was sticking by his troubled nominee for Secretary of Defense, Pete Hegseth, who stands accused of workplace drinking and sexual assault. Trump allies had floated DeSantis as a potential replacement nominee if Hegseth faltered.
Former Rep. David Jolly (R-Fla.), a Trump critic, said DeSantis and other Republicans were already looking past the time when Trump ruled the party.
“That episode clearly reflects Trump’s lame duck status when it comes to who will be fighting for control of the party starting in December of 2026,” Jolly said. “DeSantis clearly sees Trump as a lame duck with fading currency, and the Florida Governor still has plans to demonstrate his own Republican leadership. Surely DeSantis isn’t alone.”
Another prominent Florida GOP consultant noted the “ceiling” of Trump’s ask could also decline in the future. “If there is obvious cognitive decline from Jan. 20, [his problems] will accelerate,” said the consultant, who requested anonymity to speak frankly about his party’s leader.
Mike Davis, a former Senate GOP staffer known for his pro-Trump bombast, insisted the president-elect was charging full steam ahead. “Trump forced Biden, a Democrat-controlled Senate, and a barely Republican-controlled House to surrender on their annual end-of-year spending frenzy,” he said. “Trump’s just getting warmed up.”
Still, it’s clear there’s also something of an indirect challenger for Trump’s throne atop the GOP. While Trump did not get any of what he requested from House Republicans, his top donor, tech billionaire Elon Musk, did. And Musk’s trillions may be able to power political careers years in the future when Trump’s social media missives have disappeared from the scene.
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Trump, in a speech in Arizona on Sunday, aimed to downplay the idea Musk could somehow supplant him, noting ― correctly, for once in his life ― that Musk is ineligible to be president.
“I’m safe. You know why? He can’t be. He wasn’t born in this country,” Trump said jokingly.
