WASHINGTON (MaceNews) – The following is Tuesday’s status check of developments in the U.S. that can influence economic, health and political outcomes.
- President Trump is truculent, threatened, even some say, delusional. Nearly invisible for nine days, he decided to take the stage again, making news like the good old days. Should news people be delighted? Or is there a larger consideration, a bigger picture as he takes issue with the pandemic relief bill that is entwined with the fiscal year’s budget necessary to keep government operating?
- “Our darkest days … are ahead of us,” warned President-Elect Biden from Wilmington. He was referring to the pandemic, not the nation’s governing mechanisms. Trump, though, has sensed an opportunity to become the center of attention one more time, just when Congress is at its most vulnerable, right before it has to end this session and start over again January 3.
- So if Trump does not actually veto the pandemic relief combined with government funding what’s next? With Christmas Friday there’s hardly time to come up with new legislation to vote on next week. There are 10 days in which the president can sit on the legislation without signing it before Congress can start over to deal with what will have become a seldom used pocket veto. The 10 days won’t start until the president gets the enrolled legislation which may happen Thursday or Friday. Ten days from Friday is Jan. 3. By which time the government may have shut. It’s more than complicated, it’s crazy, particularly since Trump has had months in which to make his objections known.
- Among his many complaints is that the direct payments to individuals, at $600, are ridiculously small. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi cheered him on, saying his preferred $2,000 is just what Democrats wanted all along. Many Republican senators wanted no direct payments at all. So whose side is Trump on? For Trump, are there sides? Or just Trump.
- And remember the Pentagon funding legislation Trump threatened to veto? And which Congress is technically staying in session to deal with next Tuesday?
- So, news people say, Donald Trump comes through again. Nothing like chaos to keep him on the front page. It all makes the string of controversial clemencies and pardons Trump granted and announced during the day merely minor errata, expected and typical and probably only the beginning.
- The tweeted Trump video in which he declares his unhappiness with the massive budget and pandemic relief legislation also included a recounting of all his complaints about how he was robbed of a landslide win. But he’s not just complaining. He has been meeting with Republican allies in the House and some others, like discredited conspiracy theorists Sydney Powell and eccentric millionaire Patrick Byrne, to plot how to challenge electors from the Electoral College when their votes are presented to Congress Jan. 6. Vice President Mike Pence’s role that day will be to declare Biden the winner, just as VP Biden’s role last time around was to declare Trump the winner. Pence declaring Biden the winner? That would be a video clip for the ages if it actually happens. And that there is an “if” in there is a measure of the current environment in which, as one network reporter said, Trump stress tests democracy.
- So as Trump attacks Senate Republican leaders, waves goodbye to his attorney general Wednesday, ponders whether to fire his White House counsel and his chief of staff and the head of the FBI, tries to figure out a way to overturn the election results, throws sand into the gears of governance, he is looking forward to returning to Georgia to campaign for the two Republican senators in a race that decides whether Democrats take total control of Congress. How his attacks on Georgia Republican officials will affect that Jan. 5 vote is unknown. But first, a visit back to the reassuring environs of Mar a Lago Wednesday for Christmas.
- In a more sane Washington, the Republican colleagues of those House members visiting the White House to egg Trump on would be entreating them to use their influence with the president to put the country first, and not his own personal battles. In the Washington that actually exists, asking Trump to make rational choices doesn’t seem to be worth a try. In the context of a pandemic crisis that kills an American every 33 seconds or so in overcrowded hospitals, perhaps any distraction from the Oval Office seems almost welcome.
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Contact this reporter: denny@macenews.com.
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