President Trump 2.0: No more 'Crazy Maxine'?
Did anyone expect at least a hint of humility from President Donald Trump after Democrats lost control of the House of Representatives? If so, they don't know our transactional president.
Almost lost in his occasionally hostile exchanges with reporters Wednesday at his first news conference after the midterms was the olive branch he offered to House Democratic leaders.
"In all fairness, Nancy Pelosi deserves to be chosen Speaker of the House by the Democrats," he tweeted that morning. "If they give her a hard time, perhaps we will add some Republican votes. She has earned this great honor!"
What? No more "High Tax, High Crime" and "MS13-loving Nancy"? Those were the sorts of nicknames he attached to her in rally speeches. Now he was endorsing her return to the speakership, a position she held before Republicans retook control of the House in 2011.
Could this be Trump humor? Or sarcasm? It's hard to tell the difference between the two when Trump says something favorable about Democrats.
But, nope, he insisted at his raucous Wednesday press conference. His support was sincere. "She worked hard for it," Trump said.
What a difference an election makes. Perhaps the president's mood shift also has something to do with another of his favorite Democratic targets, Rep. Maxine Waters of California.
On the campaign trail, Trump sounded alarms that "Crazy Maxine" or "Low-IQ Maxine" would be "put in charge of our country's finances" if the Democrats won the House. There was more than a little Trumpian exaggeration in that statement, but Waters is the senior Democrat on the House committee that oversees financial regulation and housing finance reform.
More pressing for Trump, perhaps, is the subpoena power her chairmanship would give her, which could ruin the days of Trump and his associates.
With that in mind, Trump did show a little bit of dagger beneath his love bouquet. Should Democrats decide to tie up Congress with investigations of Team Trump, he said, he is ready to work with Senate Republicans to investigate alleged leaks of classified documents and other issues among the Dems.
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