Donald Trump may have caused headaches for himself by making an enemy of a Texas Republican, according to a former lawmaker.
The president-elect singled out Rep. Chip Roy (R-TX) this week on social media after the congressman joined 38 GOP lawmakers who opposed a Trump-endorsed bill that would have increased the debt limit as part of a measure to keep the government temporarily funded, but former GOP congressman Carlos Curbelo told MSNBC said other Republicans opposed the measure.
"It's not really that surprising, because these are the same Republicans who have been a thorn in [House] speaker [Mike] Johnson's side speaker [Kevin] McCarthy's side," said Curbelo, a Florida Republican. "[Paul] Ryan and [John] Boehner before that. So this is a normal dynamic in the Republican Party which is why Republicans need Democratic votes in order to do big things like fund the government and raise the debt ceiling."
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Trump and Elon Musk are pushing Republicans to lift the debt limit after they killed a bipartisan continuing resolution that Johnson had negotiated with Democrats, and Roy told colleagues in a fiery House speech that he was "sickened" by the provision, but Curbelo warned the president-elect that he couldn't afford to make enemies in a tightly divided Congress.
"There is a dissonance in what Musk and Trump were asking the Republicans to do," Curbelo said. "Musk and Trump, especially Musk, have been talking about deficits and debt, and yet they asked these Republicans to essentially ignore the debt ceiling, the country's debt for two years, and some of these members are actually very principled and they're just not going to do that."
"By the way, I think another miscalculation, the margins," he added. "If Donald Trump is going to make Chip Roy an enemy, you could find two or three friends in the next Congress, he could really bring the entire Republican agenda to a halt."
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