Trump’s grievances leave Americans in need in limbo

Long driven by grievance, Trump seems to be ensuring no grudge goes unpunished before he leaves office. He is using his remaining days as President to settle scores, even if those left to suffer have nothing to do with his baroque conspiracies or his wounded ego.

“It wasn’t clear that the President really was paying attention because he had a lot of other things going on,” Rep. Don Beyer, a Virginia Democrat, said on CNN’s “Newsroom” Saturday.

Those other things have primarily focused on his unsuccessful attempts to overturn the election, which have gained little traction. Initially supportive of Trump’s efforts to challenge the results in court, Senate Republican leaders have mostly moved on to congratulate Biden on his win, enraging Trump and sending him looking for ways to exact revenge.

His refusal thus far to sign the stimulus package has been viewed by at least some Republican officials as doing just that, jabbing Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell as stingy for not providing adequate checks to Americans, even though Trump’s own negotiators initially proposed the $600 checks during talks.

On Saturday, Trump lashed out at McConnell, writing on Twitter that Senate Republicans “do NOTHING” to help bolster his baseless fraud allegations. He referred to the Senate majority leader simply as “Mitch” and did little to counteract the impression his fixation on the election is clouding any real attempt at governing. In another tweet, he made a reference to large protests expected in Washington on January 6 surrounding formal ratification in Congress of Biden’s electoral victory, an event Trump is convinced can be stopped with help from conservatives and his vice president.

Rep. Adam Kinzinger on Sunday deemed that idea “a scam.” The Illinois Republican told CNN’s Dana Bash on “State of the Union” that he expects when Congress meets to affirm Biden’s Electoral College win that “it is going to disappoint the people that believe this election was stolen — that think this is an opportunity to change it.”

And Kinzinger told Bash that if Trump wanted $2,000 stimulus checks included in the relief bill he should “negotiate that from the beginning.”

“Let’s have the discussion after this bill is signed, because, right now, we’re at a point where people are left out in the dark. But to play this old switcheroo game, which is just kind of like, I don’t get the point,” he continued. “I don’t understand what’s being done, why, unless it’s just to create chaos and show power and be upset because you lost the election. Otherwise, I don’t understand it, because this just has to get done. Too many people are relying on this. We have worked hard. We should have had this done a lot earlier. And now to be put in a lurch, after the President’s own person negotiated something that the President doesn’t want, it’s just — it’s surprising.”

Others in the President’s party are also growing frustrated.

“The reason it blindsided everybody is because they thought the President was involved when it was obvious he was sleeping on the job when it came to these negotiations,” Rep. Denver Riggleman, a Virginia Republican not returning to Congress, said Saturday on CNN’s “Newsroom.”

“That’s what happens when you get too wrapped up in an election you already lost,” he said.

Trump spreads blame

“And the reason I’m concerned and my colleagues in public health are concerned also is that we very well might see a post-seasonal, in the sense of Christmas, New Year’s, surge, and, as I have described it, as a surge upon a surge, because, if you look at the slope, the incline of cases that we have experienced as we have gone into the late fall and soon-to-be-early winter, it is really quite troubling,” Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, told Bash on “State of the Union.” “We are really at a very critical point.”

But the President spent his weekend issuing complaints via Twitter about the entities refusing to entertain his efforts to overturn the election results — a list that now encompasses all three branches of government.

The Supreme Court, which earlier this month refused to hear Trump’s case, “has been totally incompetent and weak,” the President declared on Twitter Saturday. He complained his own administration’s law enforcement agencies “should be ashamed” for not taking up his demands to investigate nonexistent widespread voter fraud, warning them that “History will remember.”

He also continued lambasting Senate Republicans for failing to “step up and fight for the Presidency, like the Democrats would do if they had actually won.”

And early Sunday — about a half hour after unemployment benefits lapsed for millions of Americans — the President retweeted his video statement on the legislation that was originally published to Twitter last week. “Speaking for America!” he wrote along with the first video and then criticized the bill in a comment above the second.

Nowhere has Trump mentioned the prospect of a government shutdown, which now hangs unexpectedly over the holiday period after he refused to sign the funding bill that was attached to the coronavirus relief package.

It’s the “deep state” Trump has also blamed for investigations into himself and his associates — efforts he is now trying to undermine using his all-encompassing powers of clemency.

Pardon power

“It’s crushing. There’s no other way to describe it,” said Andrew McCabe, the former deputy FBI director who has been attacked by Trump and is now a CNN contributor, on Saturday, singling out the Blackwater case in particular.

“It’s such an unbelievably huge endeavor to convince all of these Iraqi civilians, who are putting themselves in great danger coming to the United States and testifying, to come over here, to take care of them while they’re here,” he said. “To take all of that work, as significant as it was, and just erase it with the stroke of the pen for men who had been convicted essentially of war crimes, it’s just incredibly dispiriting. It’s crushing. That’s the only way to describe it.”

Yet in Trump’s view, it is he who’s been victimized by widespread corruption and criminality, a stance that is now driving much of his actions as his term wanes.

During a round of golf with Sen. Lindsey Graham on Christmas Day, Trump continued to voice his insistence that Section 230 be repealed.

Yet if the NDAA fails to become law, those feeling the effects would not be disloyal Republicans. Instead it would be American troops and their families who are denied the pay raises, hazard pay and parental leave that are included in the bill, as well as new benefits for Vietnam veterans exposed to Agent Orange and construction projects on military bases.

Like his rejection of the stimulus, the move sets up a loyalty test for Republicans, who for four years have mostly been unwilling to break with their party’s leader.

“A lot of us are being called traitors, whether we will override the veto on the NDAA or we want to get a Covid bill through, or get appropriations through, or want to stop this ridiculous Stop the Steal nonsense,” Riggleman said.

“A lot of this is based on the crazy of conspiracy theories and the crazy of disinformation, and I think we need to stand up and stop this nonsense as quickly as possible. It’s just out of control right now.”

Kinzinger told Bash on Sunday the measure “was vetoed for nonsensical reasons,” calling the legislation “a great bill.”

“This is something we have done for 50-some straight years. It was vetoed for nonsensical reasons. This whole Section 230, which has nothing to do with national defense or the NDAA. Somebody just got in the President’s ear and convinced him,” he said, adding later: “I could not justify if I voted for this bill and then voted to sustain the President’s veto, instead of override it. I do not know how you justify that, besides saying, ‘I’m just going to do what the President wants.’ This is a great bill. This goes after China, Russia. It does a lot to shore up our cyber-defenses, which, as we have seen, are extremely vulnerable. To sustain the President’s veto, after you voted for this bill, I just don’t understand.”

This story has been updated with additional details Sunday.