President Donald Trump’s brash approach to silence dissenters and push his agenda is laid bare in a profile of his first 100 days in office, where he told a rebel House Republican not to be a “ball buster.”
It was just one example of the president’s brazen style to implement his agenda and it included putting Texas House Rep. Chip Roy in his place as Republicans wrangled over the spending bill earlier this month, according to TIME.
Members of the Freedom Caucus – a group of hardline conservatives in the House – were ready to vote against a Senate budget resolution earlier this month but at a meeting with Trump, the president made it clear he was “having none of it,” TIME reports.
“This is what I want,” Trump said after he entered the Cabinet room flanked by aides and Speaker Mike Johnson, before he “lectured” the caucus for 45 minutes, according to the outlet.
“Mr. President, I hear you,” Roy reportedly said. “But at the end of the day, I don’t trust this process. The Senate has screwed us over before.”
Trump replied: “Don’t be a ball buster, OK?”
Roy backed down and supported the measure after he said he had received assurances from the president.
People close to the president also revealed to the outlet how winning a $15 million defamation settlement against ABC in December was the catalyst that triggered a “broader strategy” of Trump’s to keep “corporate enemies” in line.
“Trump believed that if ABC would cave, so too would other companies worried about getting on his bad side,” TIME reports.
After the win against ABC, Trump was inspired. He instructed Stephen Miller, his top policy adviser, incoming White House counsel David Warrington and staff secretary Will Scharf to start working on Executive Orders.
“That was the first break in the dam,” a source close to Trump told the outlet.
The source said the message was clear: “Look, either we come after you, we shut you down, or you’re going to help me out.”
Over the last three months, the Trump administration has moved at a rapid pace, going after universities, law firms, journalists and other organizations the president perceives as “enemies.”
Trump’s former White House chief strategist during his first term, Steve Bannon, said the president is “on a jihad to reform them first by bringing them to heel.”
The Department of Government Efficiency has become “the sharpest weapon” for enacting Trump’s agenda, the outlet reports.
When Louis DeJoy, the former head of the U.S. Postal Service, refused to give Elon Musk's DOGE broad access to agency computer systems, Trump wanted him gone, according to TIME.
Sergio Gor, Trump’s director of personnel, suggested to DeJoy that “Trump and Musk could make life uncomfortable for him,” sources told the outlet. DeJoy resigned from his position in March.
The president’s tactics to implement his agenda have resulted in much of the Republican party toeing the MAGA line. And polling shows a growing number of Republicans nos identify with the movement.
“They understand that President Trump is the most powerful force in politics in the modern era,” Speaker Johnson told TIME. “Everybody wants to be on this train—and not in front of it.”
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