Waltzing Matilda and other themes of Trump Week 2

Reporting from Washington  —  Who had “starts fight with Australia” in the prediction pool for Week 2 of Donald Trump’s presidency? Step up and take your prize.

As for the rest of us, we just have to admit, once more, that with the 45th president, truth really is less predictable than fiction.

Good afternoon, I’m David Lauter, Washington bureau chief. Welcome to the Friday edition of our Essential Politics newsletter, in which we look at the events of the week in Washington and elsewhere in national politics and highlight some particularly insightful stories.

THE REFUGEES DOWN UNDER

Trump’s tiff with Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull won’t destroy a century of alliance stretching back to World War I. Indeed, given Turnbull’s own restrictionist immigration policies and his support for close American ties, at a time when many in his country advocate a tighter relationship with China, the two leaders may yet forge a close bond.

Still, the telephone call last Saturday, in which Trump complained angrily about a U.S.-Australian deal on refugees before abruptly cutting short the conversation, matters because of what it reveals about the new president. His reactions encapsulated two of Trump’s most striking beliefs — that Uncle Sam is a sucker being taken advantage of by all the world and that travelers from Muslim countries pose an outsize risk to national security.

For years, refugees from as far away as the Mideast and East Africa have sought asylum in Australia, with many crossing dangerous seas in rickety boats. Thousands drowned.

In part to stop the dangerous boat traffic and the human smugglers who profit from it, Australia announced in 2014 that it would not allow any boat refugees to enter the country. Instead, it paid Papua New Guinea and Nauru, a tiny island nation, to set up refugee camps.

That policy has largely stopped the boats, but it left several thousand Iraqis, Iranians, Pakistanis and others to languish in miserable conditions on the remote tropical islands, as Robyn Dixon wrote. Shocking cases, including one in which a despairing refugee set himself on fire, focused international condemnation on the detention camps.

In November, the Obama administration reached a deal with Turnbull’s government: the U.S. would screen about 1,250 of the refugees and would accept those who passed security vetting. The Australians would accept some Central American refugees being detained in Costa Rica.

To Trump, that was a “dumb deal” — one that would require the U.S. to accept at least some refugees from the seven predominantly Muslim countries subject to his 90-day ban on U.S.-bound travel.

In the phone call, according to the Washington Post, which first disclosed the details, Trump fumed to Turnbull that he was “going to get killed” politically because of the deal and said the Australians were trying to send the U.S. the “next Boston bombers.”

On Thursday, Trump amplified his view. “We have to be treated fairly,” he told a group of steelworkers.

“We’re taken advantage of by every nation in the world virtually,” he said at the National Prayer Breakfast. “It’s not going to happen anymore.”

A couple of days earlier, Trump had used almost the same words in talking about his dealings with Mexico’s government.

Trump’s image of the U.S. as an international patsy appears deeply embedded in how he sees the world.

To much of the rest of the world, almost the opposite is true. They see the United States as a global giant, deploying its massive military, huge economic power and pervasive surveillance networks to bend smaller countries to its will, sometimes crushing others’ hopes simply by inadvertence.

Trump’s secretary of State, Rex Tillerson, had his first day on the job Thursday. As Noah Bierman and Tracy Wilkinson reported, the new secretary starts his job at a time when the president is rattling U.S. relationships around the world.

Tillerson has a lot on his plate. But bridging the gap between how the president sees the world and how the world sees the U.S. could prove the new top diplomat’s toughest job.

RESHAPING IMMIGRATION — STEP 1

The travel ban and the 120-day suspension of U.S. refugee admissions have generated huge controversy, with demonstrations at airports, court fights from Los Angeles to Boston and wrenching images of small children, elderly grandmothers and despairing families.

The announcement was Trump’s second big move on immigration, following an earlier executive order that expanded the number of immigrants subject to deportation and threatened to take federal money away from so-called sanctuary cities. How many cities might feel the sting of that policy remains unknown: Trump’s order has many legal vulnerabilities that Democrats believe would make it eligible for reversal in court, Evan Halper wrote.

Polls show the public sharply split on Trump’s actions. Some surveys show a small majority in favor, others a small majority opposed, depending heavily on how the questions are asked.

Like nearly everything with Trump, his immigration order has polarized voters. Many of Trump’s supporters are thrilled at what they’re seeing. Meanwhile, Democrats flock to protest. Trump’s radical actions have radicalized the Democratic voting base, Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Burbank) told Los Angeles Times reporters and editors in an interview this week.

The divided views extend to the families of victims of the San Bernardino terrorist attack. Some support Trump’s moves, others say they don’t believe that restricting refugee admissions would do anything to stop future attacks.

The shooters in San Bernardino were a native-born American of Pakistani descent and his wife, who was born in Pakistan and entered the U.S. on a spousal visa. Pakistan is not one of the seven countries that so far have been subject to travel restrictions.

Even many leading Republicans who agreed with Trump on the substance of his policy criticized the hasty and chaotic process by which it was announced, which maximized confusion and disruption. That perception of chaos could hurt Trump’s image of competence as a successful businessman, an important part of his appeal to supporters, Cathy Decker wrote.

Inside the White House, however, as Brian Bennett reported, Trump’s top policy advisors feel the haste is necessary. They see themselves in a race to push through fundamental changes in U.S. government policy before their window for dramatic action closes.

Top aides Steve Bannon and Stephen Miller “see themselves as launching a radical experiment to fundamentally transform how the U.S. decides who is allowed into the country and to block a generation of people who, in their view, won’t assimilate into American society,” Bennett wrote. Last week’s executive order was just the first step in that much bigger effort.

Expect more turbulent times ahead.

GOODBYE GARLAND, ENTER GORSUCH

A year ago, on Feb. 13, 2016, Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia died. Democrats thought they were on the verge of having a liberal majority on the high court for the first time in more than 40 years.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky adopted an audacious strategy to try to head off that possibility — refusing to allow the Senate to consider President Obama’s nominee, Judge Merrick Garland.

This week, McConnell’s gamble paid off as Trump nominated Judge Neil Gorsuch, a well regarded, consistently conservative federal appeals court judge to fill the vacancy. David Savage’s excellent profile of Gorsuch has everything you need to know about the nominee and how he might affect the court.

Democrats in the Senate face strong pressure from their voters to do everything they can to block Gorsuch, including mounting a filibuster. They face an extremely uphill fight, as Savage noted.

As Lisa Mascaro explained, partisanship is transforming the Senate, washing away the features that made it distinctive — and slower — and making it more like the House. There’s almost no doubt that if Democrats try to filibuster Gorsuch, McConnell will change the Senate rules to allow confirmation by a simple majority, much as his Democratic predecessor, Sen. Harry Reid of Nevada, did with lower-court judges when Democrats held the majority.

One way or the other, barring some unexpected development in the confirmation hearings, Gorsuch seems all but assured of confirmation.

CONFIRMATION BLUES

Some of Trump’s selections for Cabinet positions, by contrast, have been facing a much tougher road. Betsy DeVos, the extremely wealthy conservative political activist and philanthropist from Michigan, is the prime example so far. She stumbled badly in the hearings for her nomination to be secretary of Education.

DeVos appeared ignorant of some basic federal education laws, including a couple that are of major interest to Republican senators. Teacher unions, which oppose her advocacy of giving tax money to families to pay for private schools, have rallied tens of thousands of people to flood Capitol Hill switchboards with calls.

All that cost DeVos the backing of two Republican senators, as Halper wrote. On Monday, the Senate is likely to vote to confirm her, but only with Vice President Mike Pence casting the deciding vote.

Gary Pruitt, Trump’s choice to head the Environmental Protection Agency, is also likely to win confirmation. On Thursday, he got the support of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee. But any effort to roll back California’s power to set its own environmental standards, which he hinted at in his hearing, could be doomed in court, Halper reported.

Senate action on another nominee, Gary Puzder, Trump’s choice to head the Labor Department, keeps being delayed because he has failed to complete his required financial disclosures. His chances remain up in the air.

SOME OTHER NOTABLE STORIES

Charlie Sykes, one of the country’s top conservative talk show hosts, took on Trump during the primaries and has remained a critic. The decision has transformed his life, as Mark Barabak showed in a terrific profile.

Democrats are already looking toward 2020, and California politicians, especially the newly elected Sen. Kamala Harris, are in the mix as potential candidates, Barabak wrote.

The marijuana industry may be too big to jail, even if some Trump administration officials, including Atty. Gen. designee Sen. Jeff Sessions, would like to try, Halper wrote.

Trump and congressional Republican leaders have been trying to get on the same page on a central GOP goal — tax cuts. So far, it’s been messy. Trump generated considerable confusion with a statement in which he suggested that a House GOP plan for a new way of calculating corporate taxes, which would penalize imports and boost exports, could be a way to pay for his proposed border wall with Mexico.

Meanwhile, Republicans on Capitol Hill are no closer to figuring out how to repeal Obamacare. Indeed, their divisions only appear to be deepening.

LOGISTICS

That wraps up this week. My colleague Sarah Wire will be back Monday with the weekday edition of Essential Politics. Until then, keep track of all the developments in national politics and the Trump administration with our Essential Washington blog, at our Politics page and on Twitter @latimespolitics.

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David.lauter@latimes.com

@davidlauter