McConnell and Trump put on show of unity as Bannon urges Republican 'war'

Donald Trump and Mitch McConnell appeared side-by-side in the Rose Garden after lunch at the White House on Monday in a show of solidarity after the president’s former chief strategist called for the metaphorical assassination of the Senate majority leader.

Trump insisted he and McConnell were “closer than ever before”, despite his having publicly criticized the Republican leader for the Senate’s failure to enact the president’s legislative agenda, including Republicans’ failure to repeal the Affordable Care Act, which Trump called a “disgrace”.

“My relationship with this gentleman is outstanding,” Trump said, gesturing to McConnell, who stood steps away.

“We are fighting for the same thing: we are fighting for lower taxes, big tax cuts, the biggest tax cuts in the history of our nation,” Trump continued. “We are fighting for tax reform as part of that.”

Stepping to the lectern, McConnell affirmed their friendship and said the two men were working together to move forward on tax reform and other major legislation.

“Contrary to what some of you may have reported, we are together, totally, on this agenda to move America forward,” McConnell said. This summer, however, McConnell drew Trump’s ire when he said that the president held “excessive expectations” for the pace of congressional progress.

Despite the declarations of unity, Trump had just hours before told reporters he “totally understands” the frustrations of his former chief strategist, Steve Bannon, who recently declared political war on the Republican establishment that McConnell leads.

“We are not getting the job done,” Trump said, as he convened a cabinet meeting earlier on Monday. “I’m not going to blame myself, I’ll be honest. They are not getting the job done, so I can understand where Steve Bannon is coming from.”

Speaking at the Values Voter Summit in Washington on Saturday, Bannon invoked the death of Julius Caesar and called for “a season of war against [the] GOP establishment”.

But after a lunch with McConnell, Trump struck a more conciliatory note and said he would encourage Bannon to refrain from running primary challenges against certain Republican senators.

“Some of the people he may be looking at, I’m going to see if we can talk him out of that, because I think they’re great people,” Trump said .

The majority leader cautioned against pushing primary challengers, noting that in the past, they had failed to make it to the Senate.

“You have to nominate people who can actually win because winners make policy and losers go home,” McConnell said.

For nearly 50 minutes, Trump and McConnell took questions from reporters, touching on a wide range of issues. He hinted that he would declare a state of emergency on the opioid crisis next week, after having promised to do it several months ago. He also blamed the Cuban government for alleged sonic attacks on American personnel at the US embassy in Havana. The state department removed staff from the embassy as a precaution.

Trump also said he was “very happy” with his decision to end critical healthcare payments to insurance companies that help low-income Americans afford health insurance. He said the decision was helping spur bipartisan action on healthcare. After repeated failures to pass legislation repealing the healthcare law, Trump claimed Republicans had found enough support to pass a new measure, which he expects despite wariness from GOP senators on the Hill to revisit the issue ahead of next year’s midterms.

He also expressed a desire for Hillary Clinton to run again in 2020. He said her defense of NFL players who take a knee during the national anthem to protest against police violence was “very disrespectful to our country”.

“That’s why she lost the election. I mean, honestly, it’s that thinking, that is the reason she lost the election,” Trump said.

On Monday morning, before a scheduled cabinet meeting, Trump busied himself on Twitter, accusing Democrats of obstructing his tax plan and bragging about economic growth. He also accused the Senate minority leader, Chuck Schumer, of hypocrisy over the Iran nuclear deal.

Schumer voted against the deal in 2015 but has since urged Congress to strengthen it. He responded to Trump’s tweets on taxes and the economy.

“This deliberate manipulation of #s & facts could lead to messing up the good economy inherited from @POTUS44 & hurting the middle class,” Schumer wrote.

The White House also released details about Trump’s forthcoming visit to Asia and the Pacific. From 3 to 14 November, the president will travel to Japan, South Korea, China, Vietnam, the Philippines and Hawaii. Officials said the tour would “strengthen the international resolve to confront the North Korean threat and ensure the complete, verifiable, and irreversible denuclearization of the Korean peninsula”.

Nonetheless, while the president was looking to 2020 and the international stage, an intra-party war continued to brew.

Susan Collins, a Maine moderate who cast pivotal votes against the Senate healthcare bills, told ABC voters “don’t want this hyper-partisanship. They want us to work together. And they want us to get things done.

“Mitch McConnell is the Senate majority leader. The president needs him. I’m glad they’re working together on tax reform and a lot of other issues. And I’m glad they’re meeting this week.”

This summer, McConnell responded to Trump’s Twitter attacks by saying: “A lot of people look at all that [legislative work] and find it frustrating, messy. Well, welcome to the democratic process. That’s the way it is in our country.”

Such words would not find favor with the president’s support base, which Bannon is addressing and which has responded eagerly to Trump’s talk of “draining the swamp” of Washington.

In September, Trump angered that base by cutting a deal with Democrats on raising the debt limit and keeping the government running. He has talked about other deals, though his list of demands outraged Democrats who had sensed an opening on the status of Dreamers, young undocumented people brought to the US as children whose protection from deportation has been rescinded by Trump.

Hard-right conservatives wrote in a letter last week during a Senate break that McConnell and his leadership team should step aside. The Senate recess also drew criticism from the White House.

“They’re on another vacation right now,” the press secretary, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, said. “I think that we would all be a lot better off if the Senate would stop taking vacations and start staying here until we actually get some real things accomplished.”