Playbook
PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP has tweeted just five times from Walter Reed Medical Center in Bethesda -- but one of them was pushing Congress to strike a Covid relief bill. “OUR GREAT USA WANTS & NEEDS STIMULUS. WORK TOGETHER AND GET IT DONE. Thank you!”
THIS IS AS FAR AS HE’S LEANED IN to this process, and it would appear that now that Treasury Secretary STEVEN MNUCHIN is heavily incentivized to get a Covid relief deal. TRUMP wants to show that he’s working. And MNUCHIN-- already eager for a deal -- is now on the hook to deliver
IT’S NOT THAT EASY. MNUCHIN and Speaker NANCY PELOSI are still haggling over state and local funding and enhanced unemployment insurance -- the same issues they’ve been haggling over for months. PELOSI wants 2t package, and the WH has indicated $1 trillion range.
BUT ISN’T IT TIME FOR MNUCHIN to throw Republicans under a speedily moving bus, and dare GOP lawmakers to oppose TRUMP while he’s in the hospital? If TRUMP wants a massive, multi trillion-dollar bill, isn’t this the time to give him one?
SENATE MAJORITY LEADER MITCH MCCONNELL won’t put a bill on the floor unless it has the majority of his Republican conference, sources say, and TRUMP would have to push them to give him a victory while he’s laid up in Walter Reed.
TIME WILL BE INCREDIBLY TIGHT. Even if a deal comes together this week -- exceedingly far from a certainty -- the Senate won’t be back in session until Oct. 19. That’s two weeks from now.
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