Longtime political advisor Mark McKinnon said on CNN on Christmas morning that Donald Trump will have to hit the ground running after being sworn in because he has a short window before he faces insurmountable challenges.
McKinnon, who has worked with both Democrats and Republicans, told host Kasie Hunt that the president-elect has slim majorities in both chambers of Congress, and that GOP lawmakers will have to start thinking about their 2026 re-election prospects regardless of what Trump wants.
“I covered the entire first Trump administration from Capitol Hill and the defining word of that period of time was chaos, right, for four straight years,” Hunt told her guest during the interview.
“You’d think things would be going one way, and then there’d be a tweet or a comment that blew everything up, right? Is that the kind of feeling you expect to have when you return to Washington, or do you believe we will see a different way of doing things?
“Well, I think that Trump and the Republican Party recognize how slim that majority is in the House, and therefore they’re going to move on that mandate like lightning in the first year, because that’s about all the time that they’ve got,” replies McKinnon.
“It’s almost certain that it’s going to swing back and Democrats will at least take the House back in two years.”
“I mean, voters are just cranky these days and basically what they want every two years is to change no matter who’s there,” according to him.
“So, I believe Trump and Republicans recognize this. I believe we will see, you know, a first, you know, 90 days, 100 days, and first year of this Republican administration really trying to get as much done as they can, because they know the window is going to close very quickly.”
