Trump wants 'control of everything,' GOP strategist says as Congress faces pressure

By — Amna Nawaz Amna Nawaz By — Jonah Anderson Jonah Anderson Leave your feedback Share Copy URL https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/trump-wants-control-of-everything-gop-strategist-says-as-congress-faces-pressure Email Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Pinterest Tumblr Share on Facebook Share on Twitter Transcript Audio For an insider’s perspective on the tensions between President Trump and Republicans in Congress, Amna Nawaz spoke with GOP strategist Doug Heye. Read the Full Transcript Notice: Transcripts are machine and human generated and lightly edited for accuracy. They may contain errors. Amna Nawaz: Well, joining us now with an insider's perspective is Doug Heye. He's a Republican strategist with experience operating within the White House, Capitol Hill's leadership circles, and on the campaign trail. Great to see you, Doug. Doug Heye, Republican Strategist: Good to be with you. Amna Nawaz: So it looks like the president is playing hardball with his own party's Senate majority leader. What's going on here? Doug Heye: Look, Donald Trump wants to be in control of everything. And what I have seen today and throughout this week as I hit refresh on Punchbowl pretty much every day is that that's causing a lot of problems within the Senate conference. I talked to Senate leadership staffers today, who said, we're constantly out of the loop. And that's been the problem for the president on so many things, if we're talking about Senate Republican reaction to Iran, obviously with the memorandum of understanding. They have been out of the loop on what the plans are, how we define success. It changes every day. Amna Nawaz: Yes. Doug Heye: And, certainly, they woke up this morning to find once again plans have changed and they're out of the loop. It means that we have said for well over a year now that Mike Johnson has the hardest job in Washington. It might be that John Thune does. Amna Nawaz: Well, there's the sort of discussion about this among senators. But just in terms of getting the president's agenda in place, John Thune had a plan, right, to get his nominee confirmed, to move forward with authorization of FISA. Mr. Trump has now blown that plan up. What does John Thune do now? Doug Heye: I don't think that their team really knows. And the reality is, they had all their ducks lined up in a row. And we always try and focus on what leadership is doing wrong, because we all think that we could do it smarter or better. Probably not. But they had all their ducks lined up in a row that they were -- so they were going to move this nomination really quickly and then pass FISA. Everything looked good and we were going to see a productive Senate. The reality is, Donald Trump rolled the bowling ball, knocked all the pins down. Amna Nawaz: I want to ask you too about the earlier story we reported, the big story about this Iran deal, because we have already seen some criticism from some Republican lawmakers. They wanted to see details of this bill before they would