grease the wheels

But as Douthat knows, some pretense is always necessary to grease the wheels of personal relations, especially of diplomacy.

And that while he has made a tactical decision – essentially, using a defence spending hike to grease the wheels of his meeting with President Trump - she maintains that the PM has made a strategic error which could bolster Russia and China's global influence.

“By late summer, President Trump starts to grease the wheels for excuses if he lost,” says Alyssa Farah Griffin, who served in 2020 as White House director of strategic communications and assistant to the president.

That could help Capital One and Discover grease the wheels with regulators and gain approval for the deal because antitrust regulators have long had those payment giants in their crosshairs.

It’s obvious why Amazon would want to grease the wheels of government in the Inland Empire.