I have a question for Democrats. Is this your first day on the job?
Seriously, if you believe Donald Trump actually gives a shit about helping struggling Americans during a pandemic he was principally responsible for bringing about, you're as delusional as he is.
It should come as no surprise to anyone that Trump at the eleventh hour would threaten to veto not only the $900 billion Covid relief bill but the $1.4 trillion omnibus spending bill it was attached to. What is surprising - and quite disappointing, I might add - is that Democrats would fall for his slight of hand and help him out.
Slight of hand, you say? Please explain.
Trump knew full well that he intended to pardon twenty people last night, four of whom were guilty of war crimes. He also knew that he would be rightly criticized for it. So he needed a distraction, something that would change the subject and shift attention away from the heinousness of his act.
Enter the 5,000 page relief / omnibus bill.
Now I don't think for a moment that Trump actually read any of it. We are, after all, talking about a man who thinks reading anything longer than a fortune cookie constitutes cruel and inhuman punishment. He literally sat on the sidelines and did nothing the whole time it was being negotiated.
But all he needed to do was queue up an oldie but goodie for his restless warriors who are still holding his water over an election he insists was stolen from him, and to throw a bone to progressives to get them to bite, and, wallah, the trick, she is done.
The oldie was aid going to foreign countries and the bone was a much larger stimulus check. Put them together and you get a win / win. His base eats it up because, well, "Make America Great Again," and progressives love it because, well, it's more money for the masses.
Never mind that the aforementioned foreign aid wasn't in the Covid relief bill, it was in the omnibus spending bill; and also never mind that getting even one more penny in a stimulus check is DOA in the Senate. Pelosi can fast track all the bills she wants out of the House, she knows full well that without the requisite 50 votes, they'll go nowhere. If Democrats really wanted to improve the bill, they'd ask for more money in unemployment benefits and aid for state and local governments. That's where the help is needed most. The fact is more than two thirds of the stimulus checks will go to people who are already employed.
Not that that matters to Bunker Boy. As far as he's concerned, the whole thing could blow up and he'd be fine with it. After all, he's out of a job come January 20. Why should he give a shit? It'll be the next administration's headache, right? He all but admitted as much in his Twitter video.
Rachel Bitecofer is right:
"BLOWS MY MIND that people are lining up behind TRUMP bc he's manipulating them w this $2K stimulus bullshit. ALL he is doing is working PR for his coup. He sat out the ENTIRE legislative process, then waits till the bill is passed to pull this out. Its nuts."
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