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Article snippet: WASHINGTON — Sometimes he just wants to know how he’s doing, like a maître d’ checking in after a meal. “How’s this playing?” President Trump asked Fox News’s Sean Hannity over dinner in the private residence of the White House the other night, a few hours after visiting Wisconsin to announce a deal to create thousands of new factory jobs. Often he’s effusive. “I love you, Jim,” Mr. Trump told Heritage Foundation president, during a small gathering of conservative leaders in the Oval Office in March. And often he delivers. Tony Perkins, president of the Family Research Council, pressed Mr. Trump for months to make the statement he issued last week saying transgender people would be barred from the military. “I’ve been to the White House I don’t know how many more times in the first six months this year than I was during the entire Bush administration,” Mr. Perkins said. Mr. Trump has strained relations with a lot of people these days — members of his own party in Congress, the 55-plus percent of Americans who say they disapprove of his performance, his attorney general, his recently ousted communications director and chief of staff. But through all the drama and dismay, one group has never really wavered: the leaders of the conservative movement. This is no accident. Mr. Trump and members of his administration have spent their first six months in office cultivating and strengthening ties to the movement’s key groups and players with a level of attention and care ... Link to the full article to read more