Trump administration tries to extinguish new brushfires

President Donald Trump is ending a notably quiet week when it comes to facing the press as his administration tries to extinguish a new round of political brushfires.

From confusion surrounding the closure of El Paso airspace to lawmakers’ bipartisan frustration over the DOJ monitoring their searches of the unredacted Epstein files, the week brought plenty of distractions that Republicans on Capitol Hill had hoped to cast aside for a stricter focus on affordability.

When Trump took live questions on Thursday for the first time in several days (he did sit for one-on-one interviews), he largely avoided dicey topics, like his commerce secretary’s ties to Jeffrey Epstein. Trump did touch on domestic policies, like his promotion of coal and a new trade pact with Taiwan, but Republicans want to see more on the economy and less management of the backlash against Trump’s aggressive immigration enforcement.

It “distracts us from the good work we’re doing on the economy,” one Republican member of Congress said.

One of Trump’s small political wounds this week seemed almost self-inflicted. Though he initially restrained himself from critiquing House Republicans who crossed him on tariffs, for example, he wound up threatening to primary them at the eleventh hour. (“He’s not upset,” House Speaker Mike Johnson had insisted moments earlier. “He understands what’s going on.“)

Trump’s fight with Democrats over Department of Homeland Security funding and Attorney General Pam Bondi’s combative House testimony are also collectively hurting the White House’s ability to turn the page.

Trump on Thursday addressed some of that drama, telling reporters that some of Democrats’ demands to fund DHS are “very, very hard to approve.” He also defended Bondi’s testimony as “fantastic” while deriding “the never-ending saga of” Epstein.

Still, both Democrats and Republicans are unnerved by DOJ’s apparent monitoring of who searched the Epstein files. And antitrust chief Gail Slater’s ouster lent yet more ammunition to progressives like Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., who pledged to “force the Trump administration to defend every single day why it’s firing cops on the financial beat.”

The president’s allies are providing what cover they can by touting recently enacted tax cuts — and urging patience. That includes Sen. Mike Rounds, R-S.D., who told reporters Thursday that “to undercut [Trump’s tariffs] right now simply is not the right thing to do.”

“He’s one year into his term; let’s give him an opportunity to really show that it works,” Rounds said.