An army of MAGA think tanks behind him, it’s Trump’s Washington now

President Donald Trump took office eight years ago as the ultimate outsider whose rhetoric often shocked Washington but was seldom taken seriously by the policy shops that have long helped administrations transform their agenda into action.

Now, he has an army of think tanks and other advocacy groups behind him, reverse-engineering even his off-the-cuff statements into white papers, training legions of his acolytes — and jockeying for influence.

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Somewhere in the middle are think tanks like American Compass, which takes a conservative, nationalist approach to economic policy but isn’t explicitly waving the MAGA flag. American Compass is generally aligned with the administration’s agenda in most aspects but isn’t pledging 100 percent fealty.

“There’s a reputation that you need to maintain to be able to say, ‘Hey, we’re actually going to call balls and strikes here.’ If you guys just renew [the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act] with a bunch more tax cuts, we’re not going to pretend like that’s some sort of incredible breakthrough for the working class,” said Abigail Ball, executive director of American Compass.

But broadly, she added, American Compass is focused on figuring out what comes next.

“We very much have always seen Trump as this transitional figure,” Ball said. “We need to figure out what comes after Trump.”