First posted on Instagram
President Donald Trump says he will use his veto power aggressively against bills from the incoming Democratic Congress, predicting that Democrats will eventually come to him to negotiate deals on healthcare and immigration once he starts rejecting their legislation.
Trump laid out the strategy in a White House interview with ESPN commentator Stephen A. Smith, recorded in the Roosevelt Room on Thursday, November 12, for Smith's show "Straight Shooter" and posted online that evening. The interview ran about 40 minutes and ranged across the Republican losses in the November 3 midterm elections, the war with Iran, the economy and a hypothetical presidential matchup against Barack Obama.
"I'm going to be vetoing a lot of things that they're going to send me initially that are bad for the country," Trump said. "And I think eventually they're going to call in, they're going to say, let's make a deal. And we'll be able to make deals on healthcare, on drug prices."
Democrats swept both chambers of Congress in the midterms, winning at least 253 seats in the House and at least 54 in the Senate, and they are set to take control when the new Congress convenes in January. But they do not hold the two-thirds majorities needed to override a presidential veto — 290 votes in the House and 67 in the Senate — so if Republicans hold together, Trump's vetoes will stand.
On healthcare, Trump said he is willing to work with Democrats because "we have terrible healthcare," but only if they want better results for Americans rather than political points. On immigration, he left the door open without making any commitments. "There are things that could be done with immigration that would be very positive," he said, while noting he is not negotiating it now.
Trump has sketched the same approach before. In an interview with the New York Post's Miranda Devine before the midterms, he said: "I guess I'll become Mr. Veto. I'm not going to let them ruin it." He added then that after a month or two of having their bills vetoed, Democrats would "come over and make a deal." In a phone call with Politico on the night the midterm results landed, he said: "They've already called, and they want to work with me. I have the right to veto everything, but I don't want to be just sitting there for two years just vetoing everything."
Democrats, for their part, have been pitching ways to work with the president. Abdul El-Sayed, who won the U.S. Senate race in Michigan, has proposed "TrumpCare," a golden insurance card providing universal healthcare, dangling the president's name on the plan. Hakeem Jeffries, in line to become House speaker in January, has left the door open to working with the other side "wherever and whenever possible" to deliver for the American people. About 6 in 10 voters nationally said the federal government should play a bigger role in helping Americans get healthcare than it does now, according to the AP Voter Poll, a survey of more than 100,000 midterm voters.
Trump himself has said he does not want to spend the final two years of his presidency simply vetoing bills from a Democratic Congress. Whether the veto strategy produces the deals he predicts will become clear once the new Congress takes its seats in January.