The New Yorker: Trump Directs His Wrecking Ball At The COVID-19 Relief Bill And Mitch McConnell

By John Cassidy

    Until Tuesday evening, President Trump was relatively quiet as he brooded over Mitch McConnell's concession that Biden had won and the Senate's confirmation. He made few public appearances and stayed a the White House with the few who were still on his side. He repeatedly tweeted that the Democrats had stolen the election and met with some of his pardoned officials to think up more ways to undermine democracy.

    But on Monday, something happened on Capitol Hill to drag him out of his stupor. Congress passed a $900 billion COVID relief bill and sent it to his desk.

    On Tuesday, Trump sent out another 20 pardons to his buddies and took to Twitter to berate the bill. He called for the relief checks to be increased to $2000 from the planned $600, implying that he wouldn't sign until it was done.

"In substantive terms, Trump’s critique had some force to it. As reporters read through the five thousand five hundred and ninety-three pages of the bill, they found that it did, indeed, contain a number of costly items unrelated to the coronavirus, including tax breaks for beer and liquor producers, producers of wind energy, and Nascar...But, in political terms, Trump’s intervention was a wrecking ball aimed at McConnell, who the day before had hailed the new spending bill as 'another historic rescue package to help American families through this pandemic.'"

    However, it also seems odd that his own Treasury Secretary, Steven Mnuchin proposed the $600 checks, because the main goal for the Republicans was minimizing cost. It seems that Trump was too preoccupied with the election results to intervene sooner. Democrats are taking full advantage of Trump's latest tirade to add money to the stimulus checks.

"One thing we know for sure is that Trump’s last-minute intervention delighted Democrats and put McConnell in a bind. Barely an hour after the President posted his video, Nancy Pelosi, the House Speaker, added to the Senate Majority Leader’s torment by demanding a new vote on Trump’s proposal to jack up the direct payments...As the night went on, other Democrats gleefully lined up alongside the Speaker. 'We can pass $2k checks this week if the Senate GOP agrees to stand down,' tweeted Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez...Shortly before midnight, Chuck Schumer, the Senate Minority Leader, retweeted Ocasio-Cortez’s message, and added, '"I’m in. Whaddya say, Mitch?'"

McConnell has had no official answer, and "The unofficial answer was probably unprintable." Most of Congress has already left for the Christmas recess, and Trump has wrecked havoc again - this time on his own party.