MSNBC contributor Jake Sherman criticized President Donald Trump’s decision to stall, then ultimately sign the latest coronavirus relief bill as an “embarrassing and bizarre episode” during a Monday morning appearance on “Morning Joe.”
Just one day after the package passed Congress on Dec. 21 after months of negotiations, Trump demanded that direct payments to Americans be expanded from $600 to $2,000. However, after a week of drama, the president ultimately decided to sign the $2.3 trillion bill as is Sunday.
“What an embarrassing and bizarre episode for the president,” Sherman told guest-host Kasie Hunt. “We’ve never seen something so strange and misguided.”
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Sherman credited Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin and House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy for convincing Trump to sign the bill, but noted that the president “got nothing here.”
“I’m not sure what the goal was here,” he said before running through several items Trump wanted but never got. “He’s likely not going to get the $2,000 checks. We can’t be certain, but he’s likely not going to get it. And so he exits this process where he began, with a bill that was passed by the Congress on an overwhelming basis.”
“It doesn’t make any sense to me personally why he put everybody through this,” Sherman continued. “Maybe he’s bored. Maybe he wants attention. It doesn’t make a ton of sense to me.” (RELATED: Bernie Sanders Says ‘Pathologically Narcissistic’ Trump Should Sign Stimulus Bill As-Is, Negotiate $2,000 Later)
The Politico writer called the week’s events a “neat encapsulation of the last four years” where Trump has “just treated Congress like it’s a foreign country that he’s exploring for the first time and has never really stopped exploring or tried to understand.”