Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross has survived two years of Donald Trump’s mood swings and purges, despite repeated episodes of inserting his custom-made velvet slippers into his own mouth on national television. Two things have helped Ross survive, a former administration official tells Politico: “Wilbur has never really allowed, at least for any sustained period of time, any real daylight between himself and the president” (translation: he’s a good suck-up); and “Wilbur has support from the Mar-a-Lago set. That’s not an irrelevant constituency for the president” (no translation needed).
Will those things be enough to save Ross after he faces the House Oversight Committee, though? There’s ample potential for Ross to embarrass himself and Trump there as he faces a grilling on the census citizenship question and whether he previously lied to Congress. But the best way for Ross to stay on Trump’s good side through that hearing may be to do the opposite of Democratic Rep. Raja Krishnamoorthi’s suggestion that “If I were him, I would consider starting with an apology, and then see where we go from there. Because if he comes in combative on this, it’s going to be a really long day.” As we know, Trump loves combativeness and bluster—though if Ross can’t pull off the alpha male thing, it could rebound on him.
Whatever Trump thinks of Ross’ performance, though, he has a lot of tough questions to answer, especially after a federal judge not only ruled against the census citizenship question, but said that Ross himself engaged in “a cynical search to find some reason, any reason, or an agency request to justify that preordained result.” House Oversight Democrats have plenty of material to confront Ross with.