Trump takes heat from his MAGA base: From the Politics Desk

Welcome to the online version of From the Politics Desk, a newsletter that brings you the NBC News Politics team’s latest reporting and analysis from the White House, Capitol Hill and the campaign trail.

In today’s edition, Matt Dixon and Allan Smith explore how President Donald Trump is starting to feel the heat from his base on two key issues. Plus, Jonathan Allen digs into an under-the-radar provision in the government funding bill that’s drawing bipartisan pushback.

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— Adam Wollner

Trump defends his MAGA bona fides amid backlash from his base

By Matt Dixon and Allan Smith

President Donald Trump’s once unquestioned grip on his MAGA political base is showing signs of strain as some of his supporters have started pushing back on White House policy proposals they see as contrary to his long-held promises on immigration and the economy.

The right-wing backlash intensified this week following Trump’s interview this week with Fox News host Laura Ingraham. Trump batted away concerns about affordability as a Democratic “con job,” and he said a controversial new proposal for 50-year mortgages was “not even a big deal.” He also talked up having 600,000 Chinese students study at U.S. universities and said the U.S. needed to bring in more workers from overseas through the H-1B visa program because native-born Americans lack “certain talents.”

The H-1B visa issue has split two segments of the new GOP base. The right-wing MAGA supporters who have long backed Trump oppose the program because they believe it hands over to foreigners jobs that could be filled by Americans, while the tech industry, a newly powerful political force on the right, has long supported the program as a way to recruit high-skill labor.

Trump remains popular with Republicans, and he’s still able to make or break candidates in Republican primaries — 88% of Republican registered voters approved of Trump in the latest NBC News poll, conducted in late October, before the latest elections. Among voters who consider themselves part of the MAGA movement, it’s even higher — 96% — highlighting the loyalty he commands from core supporters.

But there’s a belief among some of Trump’s MAGA supporters that is spilling out online that the president is increasingly swayed by wealthy donors who have access to him at private White House events, his exclusive Mar-a-Lago club and the luxury boxes he sits in when he attends sporting events, including a Washington Commanders football game on Sunday.

“President Trump is instinctually America First, but things are seriously askew,” said Paul Dans, the Project 2025 architect who is running against Trump-endorsed Sen. Lindsey Graham in South Carolina’s GOP primary. “America First is experiencing a hijacking right now. He’s [Trump’s] getting bad advice and is being kept in a bubble.”

As Trump takes heat from even the most loyal segments of his political base, he has remained defiant.

“MAGA was my idea. MAGA was nobody else’s idea,” Trump told Ingraham. “I know what MAGA wants better than anybody else, and MAGA wants to see our country thrive.”

Read more from Matt and Allan →

Related: Our team spoke with 18 Trump voters who participated in the most recent NBC News poll and said the president had not met their expectations on the economy. Here’s what they had to say →

The Senate jams the House (again) on a thorny issue

Analysis by Jonathan Allen

With its 60-vote threshold, the Senate almost always gets to jam the House on major bills. Over the years, that has let the Senate slip in parasitic provisions — new laws that could never survive the light of day on their own — before sending legislation to the House for a final vote.

But, at least in modern times, senators have shied away from opening the door for themselves to win taxpayer money.

Until this week.

Under a new law, passed as part of the larger funding bill that reopened the federal government, senators would have the right to sue the government if their data is obtained by executive branch agencies without their knowledge. Eight Republican senators could now be in line to win millions of taxpayer dollars in restitution because their phone records were accessed as part of the investigation that led to special counsel Jack Smith’s probe of the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol.

The Senate’s move made those lawmakers eligible for up to $500,000 for each time their records were accessed — which provided information on who they called, for how long and at what time, but not the content of their conversations. The provision, which does not apply to House members, also limits defenses available to the federal government.

The House could have stripped the lawsuit language out of the funding bill and sent it back to the Senate, but that would have kept the government’s lights out indefinitely. House members, including Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., said they were outraged, but the majority voted for the broader measure to open the government, with the Senate provision included.

Johnson vowed to let the House register its displeasure with a separate vote to reverse the provision. At the very least, that will give Republicans political cover — they can respond to criticism back home by saying they voted to repeal it. But it’s hard to fathom the Senate taking that up unless public outrage forces its hand.

Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., one of the eight senators directly affected, said he plans to sue and wants a big payout. He attributed that to deterrence, rather than personal benefit.

“If you think I’m gonna settle this thing for a million dollars, no,” he said. “I want to make it so painful no one ever does this again.”

The House, after 200-plus years, still has no strategy for causing the Senate that kind of pain.

That’s all From the Politics Desk for now. Today’s newsletter was compiled by Adam Wollner and Owen Auston-Babcock.

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