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But after enduring so much, Americans can hardly be blamed for being outraged by yet another indignity at the hands of their leaders.
House Republicans on Thursday rejected an attempt by Democrats to pass a bill that included direct payments of $ 2,000 to Americans – precisely the amount Trump was demanding in a random video he tweeted this week rejecting a bill. bill with payments of $ 600 that had been passed overwhelmingly with the support of his administration.
In the Republican-controlled Senate, there doesn’t seem to be enough support for a bill with $ 2,000 checks. Trump is embroiled in open hostility with House Republican leaders because they have recognized the reality that he lost the election, a dispute he acknowledged on Twitter after returning to Mar-a-Lago from his golf course on Christmas Eve.
“At a meeting in Florida today, everyone was wondering why Republicans are not up in arms and fighting over the fact that Democrats stole the rigged presidential election.” he asked, using the term “meeting” with some freedom. “Especially in the Senate, they said, where you helped 8 senators win their races. How quickly they forget!”
The bill that Trump required Congress to change was flown to him in Florida Thursday afternoon, but it offered no further clarity on what he would do with it. Government funding will expire on Monday unless Trump signs the package or Congress passes another stopgap measure; four such fixes have already passed this month alone.
The fact that no one seems to know what Trump wants, if he knows himself at all, has only fueled the impression that the country is plunging further into chaos at exactly the least welcome time.
“I have no idea what he’s planning to do,” Sen. Roy Blunt, a Republican who is generally aligned with the president, said Thursday.
Politicians immune to pain
In the past, when the government was about to close on Christmas, presidents and legislators stayed in Washington to figure it out. Even Trump skipped his Florida vacation two years ago when the agencies closed.
Also, the country’s leaders have typically attempted some form of solidarity in the trenches with their constituents when the going gets tough, as, for example, when health experts advise against vacation travel and family reunions.
But conventional practices have mostly disappeared in the four years that Trump has been president. And no one thinks twice anymore when Trump, despite claims by the White House that his schedule is jammed with phone calls and meetings, revisits one of his golf clubs as millions of Americans go hungry at Christmas.
Having forced suffering Americans to wait months for more economic relief from the ravages of the coronavirus, it doesn’t appear that elected officials will figure out how to move forward any time soon.
“We were assured that the president would sign the bill,” Blunt told reporters Thursday, casually suggesting that the president may not understand what it contains, something that falls short given the president’s combination of the Covid stimulus and the packages of government funding, and his Fury at the spending figures he proposed in his budget this year.
Starving
As Republicans work to figure out what Trump wants, more than 12 million laid off Americans could lose their unemployment benefits after this weekend, back rent will expire on January 1 for millions of tenants and states could lose funds. unspent of the $ 150 billion Congress provided earlier this year to state and local governments to help cover coronavirus-related expenses.
It has left millions of Americans facing deep uncertainty at the end of a difficult year.
“I think people are scared,” Karen Pozna, communications director for the Greater Cleveland Food Bank, said on CNN. “You know, they are scared, there have been so many people who have lost their jobs or have had to accept pay cuts. The need was great before the pandemic. Now it continues. And I see that it will continue well into the new year.”
Trump has hardly mentioned the death toll from the pandemic for weeks; In a video he recorded with the first lady at Christmas, he left his wife’s empathy as he declared the launch of recently licensed vaccines “a Christmas miracle,” although the vast majority of Americans will not have access to vaccines for months.
Lawmakers say they feel the warmth of their constituents to do something, a pressure Trump doesn’t seem to share.
“I did a town hall last night that had people crying, people terrified of what’s going to happen,” Rep. Debbie Dingell, a Michigan Democrat, said Thursday after the Democratic measure failed.
“The president, when we finally think we could give people hope, that’s what people need, hope, and to be able to start working on this in January, he doesn’t give a damn about people,” he said. “He threw more fear, he threw kerosene into a fire of terror.”
It wasn’t just Democrats who were frustrated.
“If you think that going to Twitter and destroying the bill that your team negotiated and we support on your behalf is going to bring more people to your side in this electoral fiasco, I hope you are wrong, although I suppose that we will see,” said Rep. Anthony Gonzalez, Republican of Ohio, tweeted Wednesday.
Watching everything burn
In the end, Trump himself may not know what his ultimate goals are beyond putting more gas into a system that he seems determined to see burn when he leaves office. Trump remains furious that Republicans, including those who helped negotiate the legislation he rejected, do not support him in his bid to overturn the election.
In Florida, Trump is often surrounded by more willing parasites who, in the past, have encouraged his destructive impulses. His personal attorney Rudy Giuliani flew with him to Florida aboard Air Force One on Wednesday.
CNN reported Thursday that Trump’s latest obsession is the Jan.6 certification of the Electoral College recount for Joe Biden, an occasion he hopes will provide his supporters an opportunity to challenge the results.
While flying to Florida for his vacation, Trump retweeted a call from one of his supporters to Vice President Mike Pence to refuse to ratify the Electoral College results.
Trump has recently told people that Pence is not doing enough to fight for him when his presidency ends, and has recently taken an interest in Pence’s traditional role during certification. As president of the Senate, Pence presides over proceedings.
It is far from clear that the president has internalized the message.
