President Trump just signed a bill he hates, and he isn’t hiding it.
Scrambling to prevent a government shutdown before 12:01 Saturday morning, leaders on Capitol Hill negotiated an omnibus spending bill this week that drew the ire of conservatives. The president seemed to share those sentiments.
In a news conference on Friday afternoon, Trump announced he would not be following through on his veto threats and had begrudgingly signed the legislation into law.
But he didn’t like it one bit.
“As a matter of national security, I’ve signed this omnibus budget bill,” a dour Trump said from the White House. “There are a lot of things I’m unhappy about in this bill.”
Addressing Congress, the president vowed to “never sign another bill like this again.”
“There are a lot of things I’m not happy about in this bill. There are a lot of things we should not have had in this bill,” he emphasized, calling the process “ridiculous.”
Usually when politicians use massive bills as visual props, they don’t also sign them. But referring to the 2,232-page omnibus he had just authorized, Trump demanded, “You tell me who can read that quickly.”
This might be seen as making the most of a bad situation. Trump was fairly honest about the cost-benefit analysis that informed his decision, pointing to his national security concerns but flat-out railing against the much of the rest of the bill, including its failure to address DACA and provide more funding for a border wall.
The news conference functioned largely as a demonstration of dissatisfaction. And it probably worked to convince skeptical supporters that he understands their concerns.
Trump’s decision to drop the pretenses other politicians might have leaned on in similar circumstances and honestly admit he signed a bad bill just might end up sparing him some of the inevitable backlash.
