President Donald Trump has enjoyed breaking the conventional rules of politics. But his sustained criticisms of fellow Republicans are chafing members of his party, who say the strategy makes little sense and is further endangering his rocky legislative path while alienating his few allies.

“If the goal is to accomplish absolutely nothing and fundamentally destroy the Republican Party from a national perspective, I wouldn’t change a thing,” said Josh Holmes, a former chief of staff and adviser to Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell.


Trump’s attacks continued on Twitter Friday morning when he took on Sen. Bob Corker of Tennessee for making critical comments more than a week ago. He seemed to twist the knife by claiming that Corker had repeatedly asked Trump whether he should run for reelection, an assertion others said was dubious. “Tennessee not happy!” Trump tweeted, even though Corker won 65 percent of the vote in his last election.

A Corker spokeswoman declined to comment.

The strategy of attacking senior GOP figures — along with Corker, he has taken on McConnell and Sens. Jeff Flake of Arizona and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska — is one borne out of frustration and political calculation, senior White House aides and advisers say.

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Trump doesn’t understand why it takes so long for things to happen and why Republicans would vote against him or the party’s legislation. Several people who have spoken to him say he makes demands with little understanding of how long things take. “He just says get it done, get it done,” one adviser said.

Trump has also told advisers that he was promised by former chief of staff Reince Priebus and others that McConnell and House Speaker Paul Ryan could get him bills to sign — and complained that his failures on Capitol Hill had been blown out of proportion by the media.

White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders channeled that sentiment at Friday’s press briefing when asked about Trump’s latest tweets. “The end game is for Congress to do its job,” she said.

Trump frequently tells aides that he wants distance from Congress, which he notes has lower approval ratings than he has. He doesn’t want to be associated with any failure and is increasingly convinced the American public sees Congress as failing. And he feels little party loyalty to Republicans.

“He’s an independent,” said former campaign aide Sam Nunberg. “He still wants to keep his independent, outsider-minded profile. He threatened to run as a third-party candidate. He’s an operator, you know.”

Some allies say they share the president’s criticisms and hope his attacks fuel quicker movement on Capitol Hill, and outside groups like the Club for Growth have often heaped blame on Congress while praising the president.

“I accept the president’s criticisms. I’m frustrated like you would not believe that we cannot advance the agenda in the House and Senate,” said Rep. Tom Reed (R-N.Y.). “I kind of shrug it off and attribute it to the fact he’s just frustrated that things aren’t getting done even though we have control of the House and Senate.”

But many senators and their aides are flabbergasted by the public criticisms from the leader of their own party. They say Trump hasn’t shown a willingness to understand policy, often has more concern for his own news media coverage than anything else, and has run a White House riven by scandal and turmoil. In one recent meeting with legislators, he interrupted on several occasions to veer off topic, two senior GOP aides said, even as the health care legislation was simultaneously falling apart on Capitol Hill.

There is widespread disappointment in Trump’s presidency among the GOP Conference, said three people familiar with their feelings. Many of the senators have long distrusted Trump. The only one to endorse Trump was Jeff Sessions, the former Alabama senator whom Trump made attorney general — and has since publicly trashed.

And they note that Democratic senators and their staff love the attacks, a growing concern as members begin to focus on the 2018 midterms. “If he wants to know true misery, it’s an emboldened Democratic Party in charge of the House of Representatives,” said Holmes, McConnell’s former chief of staff.

No one is immune from Trump’s criticism. Corker has one of the closer relationships with Trump, and the two have discussed personnel and policy issues at length, senior administration officials and advisers say. Trump will sometimes call Corker from the Oval Office and conference him into discussions. Aides have asked Corker, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, to intervene on certain decisions, a senior administration official said, and he often talks to top military officials.

Hill staffers sense no discipline from Trump or willingness to stick to any semblance of a plan. Aides for Trump and McConnell huddled for hours earlier this week to put out matching statements expressing a willingness to work together in the future and downplaying tensions. Both sides agreed to language and said the storyline of their feud was damaging the White House and Congress, according to a senior administration aide and an adviser.

Then Trump continued to take on McConnell and Corker on Twitter, even as his staff tried to bring it down a notch. “He saw something on ‘Fox and Friends,’” one senior administration official said, describing some of the tweets. “Do you think it’s more complicated than that?”

Trent Lott, the former Senate majority leader, said: “He just seems inclined to respond if anyone has said something. My most important motto in leadership was: The most important wasn’t the last vote, but the next vote. He would be wise to stop the criticism of Congress. I don’t know why he’s doing that.”

The open feuds haven’t halted work at the staff level, so far, and McConnell advisers say he wants to get things done regardless. Senior White House aides gathered Thursday with the president to plot a legislative strategy for the fall, and a meeting with McConnell is on the books for later in September. “It can all be changed on a dime if they get things done,” Lott said.

The question, some say, is whether Trump can overcome his hair-trigger tendencies and focus on larger goals.

“They’re not carving people into Mount Rushmore because they won Twitter arguments,” Holmes said.