President Donald Trump spent his Christmas playing golf in Florida, while a government shutdown is approaching and relief from COVID-19 is at stake. Earlier in the day, he renewed requests for $ 2,000 stimulus checks, instead of the $ 600 included in a $ 900 billion COVID-19 aid package approved at both houses of Congress and awaiting signature. of Trump.
In a Friday night tweet, Senator Lindsey Graham doubled Trump’s call for help for $ 2,000.
“After spending some time with President @realDonaldTrump today, I am convinced that he is more determined than ever to increase stimulus payments to $ 2,000 per person and challenge section 230 of big technology liability protection,” Graham tweeted.
As Business Insider previously reported, Section 230 is “a clause in a 1996 law that protects Internet companies like Twitter and Facebook from being regulated as third-party content publishers, such as tweets and Facebook posts.” It is part of the Communications Decency Act of 1996 and allows the aforementioned Internet companies to govern content on their platforms.
Trump regularly protested this provision and vetoed the National Defense Authorization Act due to the fact that it did not include changes to Section 230.
Trump in Florida for Christmas while the bailout bill is in limbo
Trump, at his Mar-a-Lago club in Palm Beach for the holidays, had no events on his public agenda after questioning the future of massive COVID-19 aid and government funding. Failure to sign the bill, which arrived in Florida on Thursday night, could deny relief checks to millions of Americans on the brink and force government shutdown amid the pandemic.
The White House declined to disclose details of the president’s schedule, although he is due to play golf on Friday with South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham, a close ally.
White House spokesman Judd Deere said Trump was informed about the explosion in downtown Nashville on Friday that officials said it appeared to be intentional, but the president said nothing publicly about it in the hours that followed.
Trump tweeted that he planned to make “a brief speech to service members from around the world” on a video conference on Friday to celebrate the holiday, but declared, “Uninvited fake news!” Without giving details, the White House said only that Trump would work “tirelessly” during the holidays and have “many meetings and calls”.
Trump’s vacation came when Washington was still recovering from its surprise, a last-minute requirement that a year-end spending bill that Congress leaders spent months negotiating to give most Americans $ relief checks 2,000 COVID – far more than the $ 600 members of his own party had agreed to. The idea was quickly rejected by House Republicans during a rare Christmas Eve session, leaving the proposal in limbo.
The bipartisan deal was considered a closed deal and gained broad approval in the House and Senate this week after the White House assured Republican leaders that Trump supported him. If he refuses to sign the deal, which is associated with a $ 1.4 trillion government funding bill, he will force the federal government to shut down, delay aid checks and suspend unemployment benefits and eviction protections in the most terrible part of the pandemic.
“I made a lot of calls and had meetings at Trump International in Palm Beach, Florida. Why don’t politicians want to give people $ 2,000 instead of just $ 600?” he tweeted after leaving the golf course on Friday afternoon. “It wasn’t their fault, it was China. Give the money to our people!”
Refusing to accept the election results
Trump’s decision to attack the bill was seen, at least in part, as political punishment for what he considers insufficient support from Congressional Republicans for his campaign to nullify the results of the November 3 election with unfounded allegations of electoral fraud.
“At a meeting in Florida today, everyone was asking why Republicans are not up for war and fighting over the fact that Democrats stole the rigged presidential election?” Trump tweeted Thursday.
“I will never forget!” he added later.
Trump has for weeks refused to accept the election results and has been promoting increasingly outrageous schemes to try to overturn the results. He was instigated by allies like his lawyer, former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani, who accompanied the president to Florida on board Air Force One.
Trump has not provided reliable evidence to support his electoral claims, which have been refuted by a long list of officials, including judges, former attorney general William Barr, Republican governors and local electoral administrators.
The US is still recovering from the pandemic
Meanwhile, the nation continues to stagger as the coronavirus spreads, with record infections and hospitalizations and more than 327,000 dead. And millions are now vacationing alone or struggling to survive without adequate income, food or shelter, thanks to the pandemic’s economic toll.
The Justice Department said Acting Attorney General Jeff Rosen was also informed of the explosion in Nashville and ordered that all the department’s resources be made available to help. The FBI will take the lead in the investigation, said agency spokesman Joel Siskovic.
Three people were treated in hospitals after a recreational vehicle exploded in downtown Nashville, with a recorded warning of an impending detonation. The explosion caused widespread communications disruptions that brought down police emergency systems and disrupted flights at the city’s airport.
To mark the holiday, President and First Lady Melania Trump tweeted a pre-recorded video message in which they wished the Americans a Merry Christmas and thanked the first respondents and the military.
“As you know, this Christmas is different from last year,” said Ms. Trump, who focused on the acts of “kindness and courage” that the pandemic had inspired.
Trump praised the doses of the vaccine being distributed and thanked those responsible. “It’s a real Christmas miracle,” he said.
Meanwhile, Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin are trying to save the year-end legislation to try to avoid a closure. Democrats will call House legislators back to Washington for a vote on Monday over Trump’s $ 2,000 proposal, although she likely died in the Republican-controlled Senate. They are also considering a vote on Monday in a palliative measure to at least avoid a federal strike and keep the government running until Democrat Joe Biden is sworn in on January 20.
In addition to the relief checks, the approved COVID bill would establish a temporary supplementary unemployment benefit of $ 300 a week, provide a new round of subsidies for hard-hit businesses, restaurants and theaters and money for schools and provide money for schools. health care providers and to assist in the distribution of the COVID vaccine.