“When President Trump decided to throw his weight behind a plan to slash legal immigration last week, the way many people heard about it was through a pair of dramatic exchanges between reporters and Stephen Miller, a White House senior adviser who is among the hardest of hardliners on immigration in the administration. That made the initiative seem the latest example of how Trump has brought forward a new series of policies that look to pull the U.S. back from the world and keep the world out of the U.S., from his Muslim travel ban to his emphasis on illegal immigration.
“But the plan that Trump endorsed is actually one offered by Senators Tom Cotton and David Perdue, both of whom, while supporters of Trump, are longtime Republicans who entered office before him. A peculiar thing has happened to Trump, the Republican president with the least fealty to the Republican Party’s traditional values, shortest ties to the party, and greatest opposition within it. As I wrote last week, Trump has gotten more done than his critics and opponents might wish, or might wish to admit. But almost everything he has achieved has been directly in line with traditional Republican priorities, while most of the things that are peculiar to Trump have failed or stalled out. Forget the “deep state”: It’s the GOP that’s blocking the president’s agenda.
Robert Reich writes, “Who’s really in control of Trump’s and the Republican Congress's agenda? Not the white working class, and not evangelicals.
It’s the traditional patrons of the Republican Party – big business and Wall Street. Which is why Trump’s only real accomplishments so far have been rolling back Obama-era regulations, particularly environmental and business regulations -- long-standing priorities of big business and of pro-business Republicans.
And why what’s most likely to get done in the fall are big tax cuts on corporations and the wealthy.
It’s also why his plans to cut immigration by half, build his “wall,” attack LGBTs, and drain the Washington swamp, are going nowhere.
By David A. Graham
