Trump signed the omnibus/relief bill and then released a statement calling for changes to the bill. Please, somebody send him that Schoolhouse Rock video.
According to Mike Allen at Axios, SecTres Mnuchin and House Republican Leader McCarthy got Trump to cave with a combination of flattery and empty promises. I take it that when Trump signed the bill, he believed Senate Republicans would go ahead and pass the $2,000 benefit and eliminate the tech liability protection I wrote about a couple of days ago. I will be very surprised if Senate Republicans even bother to go through the motions. At this point, they’re probably about as ready to get rid of Trump as are the rest of us.
Today House Democrats are planning to vote to override Trump’s veto of the annual defense bill and pass a stand-alone $2,000 benefit bill. The latter probably will be blocked again. I expect the override to pass and the Senate to support it also, but we’ll see.
Paul Waldman offers a recap of Trump’s latest episode:
Cementing his status as quite possibly the worst deal-maker ever to sit in the Oval Office, President Trump once again created a crisis, made some impulsive demands, then backed down at the last minute without actually obtaining anything other than some increased suffering for millions of Americans.
If there is a silver lining to any of this, Waldman continues, it’s that it shows us how weak Trump has become and how easy it will be for Congress, and the rest of us, to ignore him. I don’t believe there’s any critical legislation left for him to sign, which means not even Senate Republicans need him for anything any more. They might even prefer that he stay away from Georgia, although today Rupert Murcoch’s New York Post is telling Trump to give up on overturning the election to focus on Georgia.
Back to Waldman:
According to various reports, Trump’s aides and members of Congress finally persuaded him to sign the bill by managing him like an angry toddler, letting his tantrum run its course. One of the ways they seem to have done so is by fooling him into thinking that he possesses something like a line-item veto. They unearthed a process known as “rescission,” which hasn’t been used in decades but gives the president the ability to request that individual spending items be rescinded.
So in Trump’s statement, he proclaimed that the bill included “wasteful” spending, and “I will send back to Congress a redlined version, item by item, accompanied by the formal rescission request to Congress insisting that those funds be removed from the bill.” It was an attempted assertion of strength — but a completely hollow one, since even if the White House gets around to making the request (and I’m betting it won’t), Congress can ignore it. Which it will.
Through all those weeks of negotiation, I take it that everyone in Congress, of both parties, assumed that Steve Mnuchin was speaking for Trump and keeping Trump apprised of developments. Mnuchin may very well have attempted to keep Trump informed and may very well have believed Trump would sign whatever was passed. It’s clear Trump has been so obsessed with overturning the election he wasn’t paying much attention to the omnibus bill until it was plopped in front of him to sign.
At The Week, Joel Mathis writes that Trump has learned nothing. “It is remarkable that he spent four years in the White House without showing any real growth in his ability to get stuff done,” Mathis says. A big part of Trump’s problem is that he has no patience or appreciation of process. All along he has treated the details of policy making as irrelevant. He wants to rule by edict, like a king — declare what he wants done and let the little people figure out how to do it — but Washington doesn’t work that way.
Jake Sherman and Anna Palmer at Politico:
THAT’S IT? President DONALD TRUMP made all this noise about the Covid relief and government funding bill only to sign it and get nothing in return?
TRUMP got taken to the cleaners.
WHAT A BIZARRE, embarrassing episode for the president. He opposed a bill his administration negotiated. He had no discernible strategy and no hand to play — and it showed. He folded, and got nothing besides a few days of attention and chaos. People waiting for aid got a few days of frightening uncertainty.
ZIP. ZERO. ZILCH. If he was going to give up this easy, he should’ve just kept quiet and signed the bill. It would’ve been less embarrassing.
Trump’s last hurrah will be on January 6, when we will hopefully see his last attempt to overturn the election fizzle out.
David Horsey, Seattle Times