Around this time a year ago, as members of the National Governors Association got together for their winter gathering, Donald Trump did what every modern president has done: He invited the governors to the White House for a joint event. It did not go well.
The president peddled some anti-trans talking points before trying to bully Maine Gov. Janet Mills into accepting the administration’s position. When the Democratic governor pushed back, Trump pretended that one of his executive orders constituted federal law (it didn’t), prompting Mills to respond, “See you in court.”
Twelve months later, the NGA’s members are again getting together and preparing to visit the White House — or at least some of them are. The New York Times reported:
President Trump is hosting an annual meeting of governors at the White House this month, but is doing something different this year. He is not inviting Democrats.
The meeting, part of the National Governors Association winter gathering, will only include Republican governors, according to multiple people familiar with the plans who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss scheduling that was not public.
The Washington Post had a related report, noting that the White House is moving forward with plans for a separate dinner for the nation’s governors, but two Democratic governors — Maryland’s Wes Moore, the vice chair of the National Governors Association, and Colorado’s Jared Polis — learned that their invitations had been revoked without explanation. (Both governors issued public statements confirming that they’d been uninvited.)
The White House has not explained its rationale, though Polis has been a popular Trump target because the Coloradan hasn’t pardoned a convicted felon the president likes. It’s less clear why Moore was targeted, though he said on CNN’s “State of the Union,” “It’s not lost to me that I’m the only Black governor in this country.”
But stepping back, the fact that the president decided to limit the White House gathering to members of his own party is emblematic of a larger problem: Trump sees himself as president of only some of the country.
Blue states seeking federal disaster relief aid are treated differently than red states are. Blue states seeking federal social service funds are also treated differently than red states.
Taking stock of the broader dynamic, The New York Times’ Jamelle Bouie recently argued, “Trump seems to see Democratic-led states — and the people in them — less as constituents to which he has a set of larger obligations and more as enemies to be pacified and defeated. For Trump, there is no whole people of the United States. There are only his people and his states.”
It might seem like ancient history, but when the president first ran a decade ago, he presented himself to voters as a unifying figure. In January 2016, then-candidate Trump said, “[T]he problem with Washington, they don’t make deals. It’s all gridlock. And then you have a president who signs executive orders because he can’t get anything done. I’ll get everybody together.”
Two months later, at a primary debate, Trump vowed, “I would build consensus, but consensus means you have to work hard. You have to cajole. You have to get them into the Oval Office and get them all together, and you have to make deals.”
Around the same time, the Republican assured the public about his bipartisan vision: “You’re supposed to cajole, get people in a room, you have Republicans, Democrats, you’re supposed to get together.”
Then voters elevated him to power, at which point Trump apparently decided working with people who hurt his feelings wasn’t worth the effort.
