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Don’t Be Fooled by the SCIF Stunt, Trump’s GOP Support Is Eroding
Maybe we’ll look back on October as the beginning of the end
As Donald Trump’s political position grows increasingly precarious, Republicans in Congress look more frazzled by the day.
On Wednesday, in an apparent effort to run interference for the president, a group of about 20 Republican House members barged into a bipartisan hearing room demanding they be allowed to participate in the closed-door proceeding. The episode was bizarre because the panel is bipartisan, so the group’s claims that the investigation was being conducted in secret were simply unfounded. In addition, the meeting was being held in a secure room, known as a SCIF, in which participants are not allowed to bring phones or cameras as part of the protocol to ensure security, and at least one member of the renegade Republican group not only brought his phone but sent a tweet from the SCIF during their protest.
But not all Republicans on the Hill are looking for ways to protect the president. Over the past couple weeks, the president has drawn more criticism from his own party than we’ve seen at any point during his presidency.
Trump has taken considerable heat, from the left and the right, for his swift shift in military strategy in Syria. Even his most loyal allies on Capitol Hill, like Senators Mitch McConnell and Lindsey Graham, openly disagreed with the president. Last week, the House voted on a joint resolution to oppose the president’s decision to stop preventing Turkish incursion into Syria. While the measure was largely symbolic because the House doesn’t make foreign policy, it was overwhelmingly supported by Democrats and Republicans. To make matters worse for Trump, he wound up reversing his announcement that he would host the next G-7 summit at the resort property that he owns in Doral, Florida, after his pick faced intense criticism, even from members of his own party.
Yet, as impeachment momentum grows, and Trump and his most loyal supporters show signs of duress, some Republican critics have struggled to own their opposition. Utah Senator Mitt Romney, for example, was recently outed as owning the handle of a Twitter account under the pseudonym “Pierre Delecto,” which he used to respond…
