How much did Trump’s tweets really have to do with the Hill GOP’s ethics reversal?

For one thing, aside from the #DTS (drain the swamp) hashtag, he doesn’t actually disagree with Republicans on the substance of the move — the office is “unfair,” he writes. It’s just the timing he seems to take issue with.

And some House Republicans say they just weren’t prepared for the media storm that hit them when news of the rules change broke.

“I don’t think that a lot of people believed that the press would be as bad as it was,” Rep. Mike Simpson (R-Idaho) told reporters…

Trump’s tweet may have actually offered Republicans an alternative path to the same destination: just wait for the controversy to blow over. Congressional ethics expert Norman Ornstein, a vocal opponent of the ethics changes, summarized Trump’s tweets like this: “In effect what he’s saying is, ‘Hey, don’t kill it in broad daylight at noon in Times Square; wait a few months and drag it behind a back alley and nobody will see.'”