Trump turns to base to protect imperiled presidency

– Energizing the core –

There is still little clarity on how the ban on transgenders can be implemented while White House sources admit that the immigration proposal has scant hope of passing through Congress.

Emily Ekins, polling director at the CATO Institute, believes it is too simplistic to think of Trump voters as a homogenous group, but rather a loose coalition of conservatives, free marketers, cultural preservationists, anti-elites and the politically disengaged.

But, she says, opposition to immigration is a rare common thread running through most of the US president’s base.

“The thing that really made this election distinctive were attitudes toward immigration, his core supporters were the most energized on the issue of immigration,” Ekins told AFP.

“People ask ‘is there anything he could have done to get his core supporters to abandon him?’ There is one thing. If he were to back-track on immigration I think that would have been the thing to invalidate him in their eyes.”

After losing a key vote on health care and then having his hands tied on dealing with Russia by a vote on sanctions that he has tried to disown, Trump has become openly critical of Congress — even though his Republican party has a majority in both houses.

While Trump regularly railed against the Washington “swamp” on the campaign trail, he appeared to recognize the need to work with the Republican establishment once in power by bringing some of its main movers and shakers into the White House.

But the recent exits of his chief of staff Reince Preibus and chief spokesman Sean Spicer — both of whom were senior figures in the Republican National Committee — has made Trump’s already difficult relationship with the GOP look ever-more tenuous.

If the Republican establishment is being kept at arms’ length, it can appear at times as if Trump is looking to a Praetorian Guard of supporters as the main protectors of his presidency.

On Friday, Trump retweeted a friendly Fox News commentator who suggested there would be an uprising ahead if Trump or his family were targeted by the grand jury.

“There will be an uproar in this country if they end up with an indictment against a Trump family member just to get at POTUS,” he retweeted.

Some worry Trump’s embrace of that kind of message could portend a serious constitutional crisis ahead.

“We have never had a president call his supporters into the streets to resist a legal process. But it seems possible here. What then?” asked commentator and longtime Trump critic David Rothkopf.