President Donald Trump and his team worked hard to build a broader coalition to support the American Health Care Act, and he'll likely learn several lessons from the experience, Rep. Lee Zeldin said Sunday.
"There's a lot more to do," the New York Republican told CNN's "State of the Union" program. "As you talk about tax reform, infrastructure, strengthening our military, taking care of our veterans, going through the appropriations process in a four-year term, you learn lessons early on."
Trump also learned from his first executive order on travel from the Middle East, said Zeldin, as the revised order had a better rollout than the first.
"You build relationships," Zeldin said. "You get a better scouting report on, maybe one member is interested in a tougher approach, where someone else maybe doesn't want to be threatened."
Meanwhile, Trump, Vice President Mike Pence, House Speaker Paul Ryan, and Chief of Staff Reince Priebus have been building strong relationships since the election, and it might help to divide Republicans among them, said Zeldin, who remains supportive of Ryan.
"Not only am I still supportive of the speaker, many members of the Freedom Caucus just voted for him a couple months ago," said Zeldin. "You know, in order to become the speaker of the house, you have to get the votes on the floor. What we saw, it was almost a unanimous vote a few months ago."
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Sandy Fitzgerald ✉
Sandy Fitzgerald has more than three decades in journalism and serves as a general assignment writer for Newsmax covering news, media, and politics.
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