WMAL Interview - JOSH KRAUSHAAR - 09.15.17

INTERVIEW -- JOSH KRAUSHAAR - is the political editor for National Journal – discussed the debate over DACA and Harvard rescinding Chelsea Manning’s visiting fellow invitation, calling it a ‘mistake.’ • Trump Disarms His Party’s Hardliners. The president is finding out he’s the only Republican who can take on his base while working with Democrats—and not suffer much at all. (Josh Kraushaar @HotlineJosh / National Journal) – “If nothing else, President Trump’s first eight months in office are a fascinating political-science experiment. How resilient are the country’s judicial checks and balances, if a president devises sloppy executive orders testing the limits of his authority? (Very.) How much chaos are Republicans willing to take in the service of a president in the same party? (A lot.) What are the campaign consequences of a president opposing a respected senator from his own party? (Severe, for any Republican member of Congress who dares break from the Trump White House.) But this week brought the most consequential test yet: What happens when a president turns on his base, and embraces the Democratic leadership on the main issue that propelled him into the White House? Trump’s stunning about-face on immigration, pledging to protect the DREAMer population without any guarantees that he’ll get his Mexico wall, is already sending shockwaves through the Republican Party. Could this be Trump’s Nixon-to-China moment, defusing an issue that has bitterly divided the GOP? Or will his base finally defect over a litmus-test issue that has humbled many otherwise-conservative Republicans? Is Trumpism a nationalist-populist ideology that is poised to overrun the Republican Party’s traditional conservatism? Or is it a personality cult that will only last as long as Trump’s presidency?”