The Surprising Obstacle Standing in the Way of Trump’s Agenda

Trump’s biggest congressional obstacle may be MAGA diehards.

Trump and the hard-right House Freedom Caucus have been politically misaligned of late, according to reporting from Punchbowl News. The rift began when some caucus members chose to endorse Ron DeSantis and Nikki Haley over Trump way back in the GOP primary. It’s only gotten worse since then.

During last week’s Speaker debacle, the Freedom Caucus Ralph Norman and Keith Self had to be personally lobbied over the phone by the president-elect himself to begrudgingly cast their votes for Mike Johnson. And they also seem to have a problem with how Trump’s congressional liaison and former HFC member James Braid is conducting funding negotiations, taking issue with his calling in to a meeting to lobby members on freezing the debt ceiling. This was the same day 38 Republicans, many of whom were Freedom Caucus members, defied Trump and voted against the Continuing Resolution he had endorsed.

The debt ceiling keeps coming up as a major point of contention between Trump and HFC, as its members don’t seem to believe that Trump is serious about making the $2 trillion of budget cuts that Trump and billionaire friend Elon Musk have been talking about for months. This recent pattern of disagreement shows that the HFC won’t be so quick to blindly do Trump’s bidding—which could cause him some major problems on the way to getting his “big, beautiful bill” passed.

Amazon is paying Melania Trump a hefty amount of cash to produce a documentary about her.

Puck reports that the media and retail giant is releasing a documentary about the once and soon-to-be first lady as part of a whopping $40 million deal—a staggering amount of money for any figure, let alone one who commands relatively little public interest. It will be directed by Brett Ratner, who hasn’t made a Hollywood movie since being accused of sexual harassment by multiple women in 2017.

The deal includes the documentary, which will be released in theaters and later on Prime Video, and a short documentary series of two to three episodes to follow up on the film. Amazon outbid rivals Disney and Paramount for streaming rights to the project, and Trump stands to receive a hefty amount of cash in the deal.

The Amazon deal raises questions about some of executive chairman Jeff Bezos’s decisions in the last few months. In late October, the Bezos-owned Washington Post refused to make an endorsement in the 2024 presidential election, spiking an editorial that would have backed Vice President Kamala Harris.

Following Trump’s election victory, the billionaire posted a fawning message of congratulations on X, hailing Trump’s “extraordinary political comeback.” Last month, Bezos joined the many wealthy donors to Donald Trump’s inauguration committee by pledging to contribute $1 million, giving him the perk of six tickets to pre-inauguration events, including a black-tie ball, a candlelight dinner with Trump and his wife, and a reception with Cabinet nominees.

Did Bezos make all of these gestures because of the streaming deal he made with the president-elect’s wife? Or are these overtures and the deal part of a new strategy from Bezos to avoid being attacked by Trump? Either way, Bezos and Trump don’t seem to be enemies anymore.

Donald Trump is somehow still harping on his vanity projects to acquire Greenland and Canada, and every day, the trolling feels more real.

In a Truth Social post Monday night, the president-elect published some propaganda to make it seem as if the people of Greenland were completely onboard with his plan to acquire the world’s largest island.

“I am hearing that the people of Greenland are ‘MAGA,’” Trump wrote. “My son, Don Jr, and various representatives, will be traveling there to visit some of the most magnificent areas and sights. Greenland is an incredible place, and the people will benefit tremendously if, and when, it becomes part of our Nation. We will protect it, and cherish it, from a very vicious outside World. MAKE GREENLAND GREAT AGAIN!”

It’s not clear that Trump’s oldest son has any plans to meet with officials while in Greenland, but it’s always nice to share your kid’s vacation plans.

Beneath the post, Trump shared the video of an unidentified man in a MAGA hat urging Trump to buy Greenland. “We don’t want to be colonized by the Danish government anymore,” the man said, as he requested a new colonizer.

“We are the richest nation in the world, and we don’t get to use it! Denmark’s using us too much,” he continued, implying that through purchase, the wealth of Denmark would somehow return to Greenland’s small population of 57,000 people and not disappear into the imperialist machine Trump hopes to steer.

Greenland has long sought independence from Denmark, and all of Trump’s ramblings about buying the place seem to have revitalized that conversation. But that doesn’t mean the people of Greenland would have any interest in becoming part of the United States. Greenland’s Prime Minister Mute Egede recently expressed his desire for “ownership and control” over the island, but reiterated that the country isn’t for sale.

Meanwhile, billionaire technocrat Elon Musk cheered Trump’s efforts to convince people that Greenland wants to be part of the U.S., writing in a post on X, “The people of Greenland should decide their future and I think they want to be part of America!”

It’s worth noting that Musk owns the exact kind of popular opinion machine that might work to generate this kind of sentiment, and Trump has a tendency to turn his tedious trolling into reality through sheer repetition and normalization.

Trump’s idea to acquire the territory, which is not only of great strategic importance to the U.S. but contains a wealth of natural resources and minerals, isn’t popular with everyone.

Jim Townsend, a former senior Pentagon official who worked on NATO and Arctic defense policy, told Politico that Trump’s statements are resulting in a diplomatic headache. “Pissing everybody off by saying we’re just going to buy them outright really bruises our bilateral relationship with the Danes and more importantly ruins any kind of way for us to work this out with Greenlanders,” said Townsend.

Trump also doubled down on his outlandish pitch to make Canada the fifty-first state of the U.S. Monday, following the news that Prime Minister Justin Trudeau would be resigning.

Canadian M.P. Charlie Angus was quick to nip Trump’s trolling in the bud. “Canada has something called democracy. It means the leader is accountable to Parliament and can be replaced,” he wrote. “I bet Americans wish they had that now.

“And convicted sexual abusers don’t get to lead our nation. We’re decent folk,” Angus said. “Ps. Button up. We’re sending frigid cold your way. love Canada.”

Incoming State Department spokesperson and former Fox News host Tammy Bruce has spent years insulting her new boss, Marco Rubio.

Politico reported at least seven instances of Bruce making a mockery of Senator Rubio, whom Trump has nominated for secretary of state.

In 2014, Bruce referred to Rubio as an “inexperienced senator who’s never run a thing in his life.” The next year she lambasted him as an establishment insider. In 2016 she called him “the kid waving frantically in the back of room trying to prove relevance.” And that same year she admitted to muting him on X.

Bruce has since changed her tune, saying that she’s “thrilled” to be working alongside Rubio. But even if she’s being sincere, her past feelings are another example of the very real rift that exists between the more traditional conservative and the MAGA wings of the GOP.

Republican leaders in Congress are having a tough time figuring out how to pass Donald Trump’s agenda.

Since Trump’s election, congressional Republicans have been divided over how to proceed: Write one giant, sweeping bill containing more or less everything in Trump’s agenda—immigration and border security, tax reform, and energy policy being three key blocs—or proceed via two or more smaller bills. Speaker Mike Johnson prefered one bill, Politico reports, while Senate Majority Leader John Thune thinks tax policies should be in a separate bill.

Trump, however, told Johnson that he wants “one big beautiful bill,” the speaker told his caucus Saturday, but Republicans in the Senate said that they were still figuring out the right strategy.

“We’re working through all that,” Thune said. “The process issues to me are a lot less important than the results.”

Other Republicans in the House, such as Representative Jason Smith, who chairs the Ways and Means Committee, also favor the one-bill approach. Trump said publicly on Sunday that he wanted one large bill, but only hours later confusingly seemed to signal he’d be open to two bills.

Whatever ends up being the final approach, it’s going to divide Republicans in one or both of the chambers. Historically, the one-bill strategy hasn’t worked well for either party, as Democrats who backed the “Build Back Better” bill under Biden remember. That bill was supposed to pass in 2021 but ended up being weakened, only passing in the form of the scaled-down Inflation Reduction Act in August 2022.

There’s also the problem of the looming debt limit, which many Republicans oppose raising. The next budget now has a condition of a $2.5 trillion spending cut thanks to the last budget deal made last month. That will put a lot of Trump’s wishes in jeopardy and could result in another government shutdown if it isn’t prioritized.

Republicans can only afford to lose one vote in the House, and three in the Senate, making the odds of getting full agreement on a big bill pretty slim. Can Trump help everyone iron out their differences to help him get what he wants? History shows that he hasn’t been a unifying leader, even in his own party.