Trump keeps turning Republican wins into loyalty tests, GOP liabilities

President Donald Trump is turning a series of would-be Republican wins into political headaches for his own party, complicating GOP efforts to show voters they can govern as they head into the July 4 congressional recess, critics say.

In the last two weeks, Trump delayed his own director of national intelligence pick, effectively derailing talks over a key foreign surveillance program that lapsed, then on Wednesday scrapped at the last minute a planned signing of a bipartisan housing bill aimed at affordability. 

He’s repeatedly pressed Senate Republicans to gut the filibuster to clear a path for a voter-ID and noncitizen voting bill that lacks the votes to pass. And even an Iran peace deal has become harder for some Republicans to defend amid complaints that Congress was left in the dark and an $87.6 billion White House request to pay for the war. And often in his recent public remarks, Trump returns to the failed reflecting pool renovation.

The fallout has spread across Capitol Hill. The Senate, in response to the dysfunction, started its July 4 recess early and left town Wednesday night.

The House, meanwhile, is paralyzed as hardliners have taken up Trump’s mantle and refused to vote for GOP priorities until the election bill, the SAVE America Act, is passed. House members also headed back to their districts early, though they’re due back next week.

What could have been a Republican victory lap on Wednesday — a bipartisan housing bill that reins in private equity and could boost housing supply and affordability — instead became chaos.

The episodes are not identical. But they point to a pattern: Republicans get close to a win. Trump turns it into a loyalty test. The win becomes another fight.

Some Republicans are now saying so publicly.

“He’s been destructive,” Rep. Don Bacon, R-Neb., said of Trump’s handling of the housing bill. “He had a good bill that he could have signed and couldn’t take a win.”

Bacon said Trump appeared to be acting “spur of the moment” and by the “seat of the pants,” complicating a bill that “was a win for Congress and for him.”

“It was a mistake,” Bacon told CNBC on Thursday. 

In response to a request for comment Thursday, the White House referred to comments the president made from the Oval Office Wednesday night. After a meeting with NATO chief Mark Rutte, Trump defended his decision to halt the housing bill and lashed out at Democrats for opposing the SAVE America Act. He said “we’re doing great” on affordability and that his administration is “reducing prices a lot.”

Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick, R-Pa., who also supported the housing bill that passed with overwhelming bipartisan support, said the frustration among Republicans was real.

“You had 85% of voting House…