Donald Trump’s ability to make jaw-dropping comments — seemingly without repercussion — is certainly foreign to most in Washington’s establishment set. | Getty Hill GOP horrified, awestruck by Trump The brash billionaire is a foreign being to the Washington conservatives he's wooing on Thursday.

Donald Trump is descending on Capitol Hill Thursday from his perch in Manhattan’s Trump Tower, but for many lawmakers, he might as well be coming from a different planet.

They are sticklers on the Constitution’s checks and balances — he once gave North Korean dictator Kim Jong-Un props for wiping out his rivals. They’re calculated, on message, obsessed with keeping their Congressional majority — he riffs at packed rallies known for their violent clashes. Some sleep on their couches in their offices rather than pay rent in Washington — he lives in a gold-and-marble penthouse and flies around on a private jet.


In anticipation of Trump’s marathon day of meetings around Washington, lawmakers were responding with a mix of horror, fascination and — in some cases — admiration.

“The American people are looking for authentic people in government and are tired of the cookie-cutter talking points, the well-trained media speakers and the sort of bubble or echo-chamber we have,” said Rep. John Fleming (R-La.) on Wednesday evening. “To be honest I don’t know what Trump will do when he gets here, but he’s someone who is completely different than your typical Washington politician.”

Trump has a packed day in Washington that started with a high-stakes meeting with House Speaker Paul Ryan at the Republican National Committee headquarters. RNC Chairman Reince Priebus served as peace broker, seeking to lessen the vast divide between the real estate mogul and the down-to-earth Wisconsin Republican who said last week that he just wasn’t yet ready to accept Trump as his party’s standard-bearer.

Trump is also due to attend back-to-back sessions with other House leaders and with a group of Senate leaders also wary of their presumptive nominee.

The reality TV star is not a complete stranger to Washington. He’s walked the corridors of power a few times throughout the years, testifying on the regulation of the National Football League in 1985, on the credit shortage in 1991, and on Native American affairs and casinos in 1993 — sensationalizing with his remark that the Mashantucket Pequot tribe “don’t look like Indians to me.”

But Trump’s ability to make jaw-dropping comments — seemingly without repercussion — is certainly foreign to most in Washington’s establishment set.

When Rep. Joe Wilson (R-S.C.) yelled "you lie!" at Obama during a health care speech in 2009, both parties condemned his behavior as deplorable heckling. Hours later he issued a statement apologizing for his "lack of civility." Likewise, both parties condemned Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy's suggestion that the Benghazi panel was created to bring Hillary Clinton down in the polls. It helped cost him a bid for the Speaker.

For Trump, that’s nothing. “I could stand in the middle of 5th Avenue and shoot somebody and I still wouldn’t lose voters,” he once exclaimed.

“We have an up-front type of politics in New York, so the Trump style isn’t as alien to us in New York,” explained Rep. Peter King (R-N.Y.), who has warmed to Trump over the past few months and now thinks it’s time to get behind him.

What’s more baffling to King is that so many Southern voters in the Bible-belt part of the nation are drawn to him.

“People from the South aren’t usually crazy about people from the City — and Donald Trump is New York lifestyle times 1,000,” he mused. “He’s everything you would think a rural conservative from the South would be offended by — yet he’s swept all these counties in the primaries… yet another example of him defying gravity.”

Well, at least he’s authentic, Wisconsin Republican Sen. Ron Johnson said: “He’s exactly who you see on TV. There’s nothing manufactured in terms of who he is and how he conducts himself. He’s the exact same person, and I kind of appreciate that.”

Style is one thing. Substance is another.

Minimum wage hikes, abortion rights, barriers to trade — Trump might as well be a Democrat to many Republicans. But he also espouses some policies that veer so right it has conservatives’ heads spinning, namely his proposal to temporarily ban Muslims from the U.S. and to deport all 11 million undocumented workers.

And for lawmakers who spent countless hours reading policy talking points and studying the intricacies of trade and health care, Trump’s resume is glaring for its lack of policy expertise. His lack of experience has taken center stage, for example, in his original tax plan pitch, which the conservative Tax Foundation said would cost $10 trillion. He also mispronounced “Tanzania” during his in-depth foreign policy speech in Washington several weeks ago, eliciting snobby coffee-pot chatter in offices around the beltway.

“He’s never done anything like this before — doesn’t really have any experience in governing, but that seemed to be the things that attracted most people to him," said Senate Republican Whip John Cornyn (R-Texas), who met Trump several times in New York.

He called Trump "a unique, obviously very colorful person." "The voters disqualified the people that have the most experience in the best records in favor of somebody who has neither experience or a record,” he said.

Rep. Steve Womack said those types of policy mishaps are the reason Ryan is so wary of Trump: “Paul’s a policy guy — it’s well known. And I think his support is driven in many respects by the policies someone lays out, but we haven’t seen a lot of policy from Donald Trump. So I think it’s understandable that Paul would be a little hesitant right now."

Still, Trump supporter Rep. Lou Barletta (R-Penn.) said that’s something he actually likes about Trump: that he doesn’t pretend like he knows everything and asks for help.

“Politicians say: I know what the problem is, and I know all the answers and I can fix it— but Trump is a very successful business executive,” the Pennsylvania Republican said, noting that Trump, like any CEO, plans to “surround himself with the best people he can find.”

“Maybe he doesn’t look like a politician and stand in front of the camera and saying ‘I know how to fix it,' but he kind of does know how to fix it: by sitting at a boardroom with all the best people he can find and listening,” he said. “We have never seen anybody like this: A true executive in the executive office.”

Trump also has his ace-in-the-hole: money.

Republican lawmakers, like their Democratic counterparts, are used to constantly begging for money for elections. But Trump is the billionaire normally doing the giving.

They’re already talking up how they can tap his celebrity to make bank, according to Rep. Chris Collins, a Trump supporter from New York.

“That’s an olive branch that they’ve already extended — to be part of fundraising,” he said.

Burgess Everett contributed to this report.