Aug 10, 2018 — When North Country Rep. Elise Stefanik welcomes President Trump to Fort Drum on Monday, she’ll take the next step in a complex, risky and often conflicted political relationship that reflects the Republican Party’s broader struggle with Trump’s presidency.

Stefanik – who describes herself as a moderate conservative – has frequently lambasted Trump, using terms such as “offensive,” “misguided,” and “contrary to American ideals” to describe his character, his policy goals, and his actions. That’s not typical language for a politician describing a commander in chief from her own party.

On the other hand, Stefanik has voted with Trump roughly 90% of the time.  She began inviting him to visit the North Country back in March and has declined repeatedly to offer a broad critical assessment of his presidency or his character. 

That stands in sharp contrast with her stance toward President Barack Obama, whom she condemned for “failed leadership.”  Asked repeatedly to offer a comprehensive appraisal of Trump’s leadership, Stefanik has declined, insisting she will treat this president’s actions on an issue by issue basis. 

“As a member of Congress, I think it is important to remain focused and be the best representative you can be,” Stefanik said in an interview with the Glens Falls Post Star in February of this year.  “I have been very independent and when there are issues I disagree with, I state so.”

Caution and dismay during the presidential campaign

Stefanik’s cautious approach began during the 2016 presidential campaign, when she declined repeatedly to say whether she would support Trump. 

Even after he secured the Republican nomination, Stefanik often appeared unwilling to speak Trump’s name.  Only after frequent questions from reporters did the then-freshman congresswoman acknowledge she would back “my party’s nominee.”

Several times during the campaign, Stefanik was forced to acknowledge actions by Trump that were viewed widely, even by leaders of the GOP, as controversial and offensive. 

After candidate Trump spoke dismissively of the Khans, a gold star family whose son died in Iraq, Stefanik issued a statement saying “there is no excuse to be attacking gold star families.”   

Then came the Access Hollywood tape, in which Trump can be heard joking and boasting about sexual assault and marital infidelity, words he characterized as locker-room banter. 

“Donald Trump’s inappropriate, offensive comments are just wrong,” Stefanik said on Twitter. “No matter when he said them or whatever the context. I hope his apology is sincere.”

Stefanik also recoiled when candidate Trump offered ideas on national defense that included disbanding the NATO military alliance, embracing Russian leader Vladimir Putin, and the US demanding ownership of Iraqi oil fields.

“His statements regarding NATO, his statements regarding Putin, regarding some of the positions in regards to Iraq that he made, regarding the oil fields — I absolutely oppose those,” Stefanik said.

Despite those clashes, however, she stuck by Trump, confirming her endorsement of his campaign.  In the nineteen months since, she has often explained her loyalty in political terms, pointing to the fact that Trump won her district by a sizable margin. 

"He tapped into rural parts of America who have felt left behind," she told North Country Public Radio in March. "He won the [NY21] district overwhelmingly."

Despite mounting controversy, Stefanik maintains loyalty

After Trump took office in January 2017, some Republicans hoped he would moderate his views and restrain his bare-knuckled Tweet-storm approach to politics.  But it quickly became clear he would carry out his promise to make this a presidency like no other in modern American history. 

His fiery and often factually inaccurate rhetoric on issues ranging from race relations and the white supremacist march in Charlottesville to the role of the FBI and an independent American judiciary pushed many moderate Republicans into the “never Trump” camp, with some of Stefanik’s former political allies condemning the administration in stark terms. 

William Kristol, a one-time colleague of Stefanik and editor-at-large of the conservative Weekly Standard, describes Trump regularly as a “demagogue” and has blasted the GOP for not opposing him more aggressively.  “People are defending things that I think a year and a half ago would have horrified them,” Kristol said in a February 2018 interview with The New Yorker magazine.

Stefanik, however, has maintained the delicate, sometimes controversial balance with Trump that began during the campaign.  That means condemning the White House on specific matters, while refusing to connect the dots or assess Trump’s wider pattern of behavior.

In part, this reflects the fact that the two Republicans agree on some key issues, including the fight to dismantle the Affordable Care Act, opposition to legal abortion, gun rights, and withdrawing the US from a nuclear arms deal with Iran. 

Stefanik has also praised Trump’s two Supreme Court picks and she joined him in pushing for a dramatic expansion of US military spending.  “I am proud of the partnership with this administration to begin rebuilding our military,” she said this week in a statement.

Stefanik pushes back, sometimes effectively

But Stefanik has also opposed many of the core policy ideas that have come to define Trump’s first term.

On immigration, she pushed back against Trump’s plan to build a wall along the US-Mexico border, refusing to endorse his proposal of using Department of Defense funds for the project.  “Not gonna happen,” she told the Watertown Daily Times. 

She also condemned Trump’s executive order banning immigrants and refugees from predominately Muslim countries, co-sponsored legislation to halt the administration’s controversial policy of separating migrant children from their parents, and scolded Trump when he said many migrants to the US come from “sh#*hole countries.”

“I strongly believe the President's comments were wrong and contrary to our American ideals,” Stefanik wrote on Twitter.  

Stefanik has also broken with Trump by urging action on climate change, which the President describes inaccurately as a conspiracy theory, possibly fostered by the Chinese. 

She was one of the few Republicans to criticize Trump for withdrawing the US from the Paris climate accord, calling the move a mistake. 

“We understand climate change is a serious threat that must be addressed by our entire global community, and the United States should continue to lead,” she said in a statement.

With some success, she also fought the administration’s effort to defund and largely dismantle the Environmental Protection Agency.  In April, she was among the first Republicans to call for EPA administrator Scott Pruitt to step down.  He departed three months later.

She and her staff have also argued repeatedly that Stefanik works behind the scenes to shape policy in Washington to reflect a more bipartisan spirit.  NCPR found it impossible to assess independently how effective those efforts have been.

On Russia, a growing breach

Perhaps the widest gap between Trump and Stefanik has grown from the White House’s controversial approach to international affairs in general and Russia in particular.

Trump has repeatedly questioned the value of the NATO military alliance, while voicing warm regard for Russian leader Vladimir Putin and downplaying the significance of Kremlin meddling in the 2016 presidential election.

In a March interview with NCPR, Stefanik criticized the White House for taking too long to deploy $120 million allocated by Congress to counter the Kremlin’s cyber campaign against the U.S.  "I've been deeply concerned that the Trump administration hasn't spent the money that we appropriated," Stefanik said.

After Trump’s widely criticized summit with Putin in Helsinki – where the President again signaled a strong affinity for the Kremlin leader – Stefanik pushed back once more:  “I believe Russia is an adversary and we must continue to work with our allies to counter Russia’s influence around the world,” she wrote on Twitter.

Stefanik, a member of the House Intelligence Committee, has offered repeated support for independent counsel Robert Mueller.  His team is charged with probing Russia’s intervention in American politics and investigating whether members of Trump’s 2016 campaign team colluded with Kremlin. 

While Trump calls the probe a “witch hunt,” she has insisted that Mueller’s team will produce a “non-partisan” report.  "I have not seen evidence of collusion," Stefanik told NCPR in March, adding: "I think the Mueller investigation is best situated to answer that question."

More broadly, Stefanik has rejected Trump’s argument that he could pardon himself if he chose, as well as his repeated claims that he is the victim of a conspiracy by enemies within the US intelligence community.  “I disagree on [Trump’s] attacks on law enforcement and the Department of Justice," she told the Glens Falls Post Star.

New tensions over trade

In recent months, Stefanik has battled the White House over yet another key building block of Trump’s agenda:  his growing trade wars and insistence that the NAFTA agreement should be scrapped. 

Trump has said that tariffs against goods from Canada and other long-time trading partners “are the greatest” and will eventually produce dividends for US farmers and factory workers.

“I strongly oppose these tariffs on our nation’s closest economic partner, Canada,” Stefanik countered, describing tariffs as a new form of taxation that will harm US consumers and industries.

“If President Trump wants to target Chinese steel dumping, he should target tariffs at China and not at our friends to the north.”

Stefanik voiced particular alarm in June, as relations between the US and Canada deteriorated sharply after a top White House trade official declared that there is a “special place in hell” for Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.

“I am hopeful that we can move beyond this,” Stefanik told NCPR.  “There was a member of the administration that apologized in terms of the characterization that he made of Prime Minister Trudeau.”

The trade issue will serve as a major test for Stefanik. She has continued to shuttle from Washington to Ottawa and Montreal, making the case that NAFTA is essential to the North Country’s economy and shouldn’t be unraveled.

“Hopefully we don’t get to that point and can focus on modernizing the trade agreement between those three countries and how we can strengthen (NAFTA) and not throw the baby out with the bathwater,” Stefanik said in an interview with the Sun newspaper.

Can Stefanik maintain this balance?

The growing tension between Stefanik’s rhetoric on Trump’s specific ideas and her broad support for his administration

has raised eyebrows.  The region’s leading newspapers, in particular, have been critical of her unwillingness to talk about the wider pattern of Trump’s behavior.

“Stefanik is eventually going to have to do more than express her concerns,” concluded the Glens Falls Post Star in one fairly typical lead editorial in May 2017.  “She is going to have to stop tiptoeing and take a stand.”

Her Democratic opponent in this year’s House race, Tedra Cobb,  has also accused Stefanik of failing to challenge the President’s actions in meaningful ways.  “Carefully parsed tweets don’t change the fact that Rep. Stefanik and Congress abdicated its vital role,” Cobb wrote on Twitter.

It remains unclear how Stefanik’s continued support for Trump will play with voters in the 21^st District come November. As she often points out, Trump won the North Country by roughly twelve points in 2016. 

But in other parts of the US where the President’s political influence has been tested through special elections, Republicans have seen sizable declines in enthusiasm and turnout.

What is clear is that for better or worse Stefanik’s public loyalty to Donald Trump will be cemented much more clearly in the public's mind after Monday.  It’s a risky moment for her.  After months of maintaining a wary, often arms-length relationship, she will take the stage with Trump at Fort Drum. 

As this President has made clear time and again, once the two of them are standing in front of that crowd anything is possible.