“A lot of Democrats don’t trust Trump and don’t trust the administration,” Ohio Rep. Tim Ryan told RCP. “They’ve poisoned the well to try to actually bring the country back together and start finding things to work on together.”
Ryan’s northeast Ohio district encompasses areas of Youngstown and Warren, blue-collar bastions that helped to buoy Trump. While Trump lost Ryan’s district, he outperformed Mitt Romney there by 10 points. Ryan challenged Nancy Pelosi earlier this year for House minority leader, arguing that the party had lost touch with its working-class constituents. But Ryan maintains Trump is “completely betraying” them with his hiring of Wall Street executives for his Cabinet and for backing an Obamacare replacement plan that the Congressional Budget Office said would disproportionally impact older and poorer Americans…
But before the White House can think about picking off Democrats, the president would have to build a relationship with a caucus that is wary and distrustful of him. “How do you make a deal with somebody who says one thing one day, and the next day says he’s never said that?” said Mollineau.
Trump perhaps exacerbated those concerns last week when he blamed the Democrats for the GOP scuttling its own bill and said he would let Obamacare “explode.” Democratic activists fear that Trump will use executive tools to weaken the law.
Join the conversation as a VIP Member