Defying the odds and expectations of many, President Donald Trump went to the Middle East this week and announced what many thought impossible — a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas and, hopefully, a path to peace in the Middle East.
As a part of getting both sides to agree to a cease fire, they each had to give up the hostages and prisoners that had given them leverage in negotiations up until now. With Trump ostensibly leading the way, leaders of other countries in the region exerted their influence, too. We don’t know what comes next, but watching weeping families reunite and cheering crowds in the streets gave both sides hope that maybe, hopefully, the worst is over.
As a part of announcing the cease fire, the president also spoke at a Gaza summit, where he heaped praise on European and Arab leaders, even the ones he has battled in the past.
He called French President Emmanuel Macron “my friend” and warmly shook the hand of British Prime Minister Keir Starmer. “Is everything all good? It’s very nice that you’re here,” Trump said.
He told Italian prime minister Giorgia Meloni that she was beautiful and called Turkish president Recep Erdoğan a “tough person” who is always there when he needs him. “He never lets me down.”
Egyptian President Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi was also “my friend” who happens to run a country “with a very low crime rate,” while Sheikh Mansour bin Zayed Al Nahyan, the vice president of the United Arab Emirates, had terrific shoes and “a lot of cash, bundles of cash.” You get the point. For everybody in the room with a role to play, Trump had something nice to say.
What if that version of Trump came back to the United States to run the country as well as he ran the peace process? He could start with Congress, where Republicans are in charge but battling with Democrats and presiding over an empty House chamber, an impotent Senate and a two-week government shutdown that is already longer, harder and uglier than it ever needed to be.
Although Republicans started the shutdown with a proposal to pass a short-term government funding bill while they figured out a longer-term appropriations package, Democrats quickly made it clear that their support would only come with more money for Americans’ health care coverage. Specifically, Democrats wanted a commitment from Republicans for money to extend soon-to-expire tax credits for Americans to afford health insurance through the Affordable Care Act.
Instead of negotiating with Democrats to find an alternative they could all live with, Republicans stuck to their positions. They let government funding lapse, shut down the government and sent House members home to their districts indefinitely. The Senate remained in regular session but has voted over and over on funding bills that Republicans don’t have the votes to pass.
Asked by a reporter Tuesday why Republican leaders don’t change their shutdown strategy since no obvious progress is being made, House Speaker Mike Johnson said, “I don’t have any strategy. I’m doing the right thing, the clearly obvious thing, the traditional thing. … I don’t have anything to negotiate.”
But Johnson’s version of the right thing isn’t getting much of anything done. And neither are Republicans.
While the House was in recess Monday, U.S. Rep. Mike Collins, R-Jackson, went to Democratic U.S. Sen. Jon Ossoff’s Atlanta office to record a campaign video of himself. In it, he called the senator Democrats’ “errand boy” and gave Ossoff a “pink slip,” since Collins is one of several Republicans running against Ossoff for his Senate seat next year.
But Ossoff was back in Washington, casting votes in the Senate and posting videos of his own, not about Republican House members, but about the Georgians about to experience triple-digit increases to their health insurance premiums if Congress fails to act soon.
In one video, Rebecca Burns from Athens says, “I just went last week to check to see what my health care premiums are going to be and my health care is going up 210%.” Another woman, Amy Bielawski from Tucker, says “The ACA premiums allow me to have insurance, really for the first time in my life.” If premiums go up dramatically, as they are expected to, she can’t imagine how she’d keep her insurance in the future.
If my conversations with exhausted and exasperated Georgians are any indication, Republicans would get far more votes if they figured out a way to fix the health care system in the country than “owning the libs” on social media ever will. Leading the way out of the government shutdown and running the country well for the next year and a half would be a sign of competence, not weakness.
And here’s where Trump could come in.
Instead of insulting and demonizing Democrats, whose votes Republicans need to reopen the government, he could instead try to find a place where each side could give in and areas where they could agree.
If Trump wants his party to win the midterm elections next year, he needs to show that Republicans can do the basics of running a functional government.
The president just did the impossible of finding peace overseas. How about doing the same in America next?
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