Critical week ahead for Trump as he nears 100-day milestone
It’s a busy week ahead in Washington. After a two-week break, Congress will be back in session, facing a Friday deadline for a possible government shutdown.
The showdown comes as a new poll out Sunday that shows President Trump’s approval ratings at record lows - while those who voted for Mr. Trump remain satisfied with his performance.
Next Saturday marks the offical 100th day of the Trump administration and our chief Washington correspondent and Face the Nation host John Dickerson will be sitting down with the president.
“I’m curious about what the president has actually learned in office,” Dickerson says.
Dickerson will interview Mr. Trump at the White House as he reaches the 100 day milestone.
“You know the president can be incredibly blunt, he was during the campaign,” Dickerson said. “So I’d like for him to bring that to his own evaluation of his own presidency and really see if he can be as blunt about Washington and his role in it, as he was as a candidate”
On Sunday, Mr. Trump took his case to Twitter for a wall along the Mexican border.
“It will stop drugs and very bad MS-13 gang members” and “Mexico will be paying - in some form - for the badly-needed border wall.”
Congress returns from its break this week with a possible government shutdown looming on Friday. Democrats and Republicans are expecting a few days of negotiatons before passing a spending bill.
Mr. Trump’s chief of staff Reince Priebus says paying for border security is an issue, but he’s optimistic.
“I’m pretty confident we’re going to get something that satisfactory to the president in regard to border security,” Priebus told NBC’s “Meet the Press.”
“It’s a political stunt,” said Sen. Dick Durbin (D-IL), the second most-powerful Democrat in the Senate, on CNN. “To think that he would consider shutting down the government of the United States of America over this outlandish proposal of a border wall that would be the height of irresponsibility.”
As Mr. Trump suggests tax reform and another repeal of Obamacare also in the works, a new Washington Post poll shows Mr. Trump with the lowest approval rating at this point in a presidency of any commander-in-chief in the modern era.
And while his base still sees him favorably, he has yet to expand that appeal.
“Normally if your base is the only group that loves you, that’s a problem,” Dickerson says. “For this president, the solidity of his base may very well be something that pushes him on to behave just as he’s behaving.”
President trump is staging counter-programming on Saturday. Instead of attending the annual White House Correspondents Dinner, Mr. Trump will be holding a campaign-style rally in Pennsylvania. He is the first president to skip the dinner since Ronald Reagan, who at the time was recovering from an assasination attempt.