President Trump criticized Republican Senate leaders on Friday for blocking his requests for $ 2,000 COVID-19 stimulus checks, while not revoking legal protections for social media companies.
“Our Republican Senate has just lost the opportunity to get rid of Section 230, which gives big tech companies unlimited power. Pathetic!!!” Trump tweeted.
He added: “Now, they want to give people devastated by the China Virus $ 600, instead of the $ 2,000 they need so much. It’s not fair or smart! “
The Senate voted on Friday to override Trump’s veto of a $ 740 billion defense bill, despite failing to reach agreement on the $ 2,000 checks or repealing Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act .
On Friday, Trump vented against Republican Senate leaders when he asked South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem to launch a challenge in Republican primaries against Senate majority leader John Thune (R-SD).
Thune and Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell are discouraging Trump’s allies from challenging the victory of President-elect Joe Biden at the Electoral College on January 6.
Trump said last month that he vetoed the defense bill because it did not revoke Section 230 and because it sought to restrict its withdrawal of troops from Afghanistan from 4,500 in November to 2,500 on January 15. He also opposed a provision to rename 10 military bases that honor the Confederates.
Many Republicans mobilized to repeal Section 230, which gives Internet platforms immunity to third-party content, after Twitter and Facebook censored the Post’s report in October on a Hunter Biden hard drive that contained documents that seemed to link the then a Democratic candidate for his son’s business relations in China and Ukraine.
McConnell (R-Ky.) Said he wanted to bundle $ 2,000 stimulus checks, repeal Section 230 and create an electoral fraud commission, which was also requested by Trump.
Senate Democrats led by minority leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) asked McConnell to allow separate votes on all three questions instead, because the legislative session ends on Sunday and only the $ 2,000 checks have passed the House. .
Ultimately, Democrats allowed the veto of the Trump defense bill to proceed without obtaining a vote on the $ 2,000 checks.
Trump took 10 full days to veto the defense bill after Senator Rand Paul (R-Ky.) Postponed his consideration last month as a tactic to allow the withdrawal from Afghanistan to continue.
Although many conservatives were opposed to the $ 2,000 checks out of concern for national debt and inflation, the proposal won 44 votes from the Republican Party in the House and a group of Republican senators also sought to vote, including Senator Lindsey Graham (R-SC ), Josh Hawley (R-Mo.), Kelly Loeffler (R-Ga.), David Perdue (R-Ga.) And Marco Rubio (R-Ky.)