A lot has happened since President Trump shut down coronavirus stimulus package talks with a tweet at the start of the month, accusing House Speaker Nancy Pelosi of not negotiating in good faith, sending the stock market plummeting, and leaving millions of people to wonder how they would get through the rest of the year.
Then, before the day was out, he urged greater aid for airlines and small businesses, adding that Congress should provide more relief to households.
Since then, the White House has oozed optimism that a deal can be reached quickly while the president throws around the sort of numbers that seem certain to trigger nosebleeds among fiscal conservatives.
The result is basically a three-way struggle. Predictably, a Democratic House with generous spending plans is pitted against a Republican Senate that dismisses as a distraction anything unrelated to confirming Judge Amy Coney Barrett to the Supreme Court. But what to make of a president who is willing to call off talks one minute before demanding more money for families the next, lining up with Democrats one minute before haranguing them the next?
“I get Pelosi. I get the Republicans. The only thing that doesn’t make sense is this flip-flopping by the president,” said Jeanne Zaino, a professor of political science at Iona College.
Just don’t see any way Nancy Pelosi and Cryin’ Chuck Schumer will be willing to do what is right for our great American workers, or our wonderful USA itself, on Stimulus. Their primary focus is BAILING OUT poorly run (and high crime) Democrat cities and states….
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 21, 2020
By Wednesday, all the signs indicated that the White House was ready to work with the Democrats to find a package worth more than the $1.8 trillion Pelosi rejected earlier this month — and far more than the $500 billion proposed by Senate Republicans.
White House chief of staff Mark Meadows said it was now up to Pelosi to do the right thing.
“Secretary [Steven] Mnuchin and the president have actually moved more toward Nancy Pelosi in a spirit of trying to provide real relief for the American people,” he told reporters at the White House. “I haven’t seen the commensurate move by Speaker Pelosi coming the other way, and so, if there’s a deal to be done, it’s there for her to do. And if it doesn’t get done, the blame will be totally on Speaker Pelosi’s shoulders.”
Ignore the tough talk. Trump and the White House know what the promise of a fresh round of checks would do before Nov. 3. And there was the market plunge — one of Trump’s favorite indicators — when he called off talks.
“Trump was elected because he made clear he wasn’t the sort of conservative who would put worrying about the debt before helping American families,” said a former White House official. “He’s gone back and forth on it, but that Election Day deadline is sure to be focusing the mind.”
But has anyone told Trump that he needs a deal ahead of the election? For just as his chief of staff was signaling a narrowing of differences and his press officers were talking up the chances of preelection deal, the markets perked up, and Trump voiced doubts.
“Just don’t see any way Nancy Pelosi and Cryin’ Chuck Schumer will be willing to do what is right for our great American workers, or our wonderful USA itself, on Stimulus,” he tweeted, accusing the Democratic leadership of only being focused on bailing out blue states and cities.
As ever, the answers may lie in his life as a businessman and in the pages of the book he wrote in 1987.
First, why should Trump care how much the final deal costs? It’s not his money.
“I discovered, for the first time but not the last, that politicians don’t care too much what things cost. It’s not their money,” he wrote in The Art of the Deal, setting out his view of how politics works.
And second, always have other options. “Know when to walk away from the table,” he wrote.
That may explain some of the president’s flip-flopping from pushing for a deal to backing away, sometimes within the same day. That may work for a property developer in New York, but how will voters view this sort of brinkmanship with squeezed household finances in the days before an election?
