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Now, it's not unusual for the president to be on the same page as his party in Congress, so it may often seem as if there's no difference between the White House negotiating for the party and congressional leaders doing the bargaining. But to the extent that is true, it's usually because the president already worked out differences within his own party -- and even so, there are often serious sticking points.That just doesn't seem to be the case with Trump on any legislation. When it comes to items where he clearly differs from congressional Republicans -- such as infrastructure or the Mexico wall -- he basically just gets rolled and doesn't do much about it. On everything else, he just climbs aboard whatever vehicle is in motion. He appears to have virtually no independent influence at all. In fact, one way to interpret Tuesday's spending bill maneuvers was as a clear retreat from the one time that Trump did defy McConnell and Ryan and made a separate deal with Schumer and Pelosi on short-term procedures for spending bills and the debt limit. It's always hard to assign purpose to Trump's statements, but one possible explanation for his strongly worded tweet was that he needed to reassure Republican leaders that he wouldn't go off on his own again. Which, of course, made the meeting worthless for the Democratic leaders.
