White House Staffers Act As Hostage Negotiators To Get Trump To Work

According to a new report by Axios, White House staffers and cabinet members were forced to behave like "hostage negotiators" in order to get Trump to agree to sign the COVID relief bill into law. This immaturity and resistance of basic norms has become the calling card of Donald Trump, and Farron Cousins explains why this has been so problematic.

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*This transcript was auto-generated. Please excuse any typos.

Donald Trump, as we all know now has signed the stimulus relief bill into law. It's a horrible, horrible bill that really isn't going to help anybody. Unless of course you happen to be yourself, a corporation, or to somebody in the top. 10% of this country y'all are going to be great. Everybody else, including the people who actually need relief, uh, no you're screwed, but Trump did eventually sign this bill Sunday evening. And now we're finding out according to a political, uh, excuse me, Axios report by Mike Allen. Uh it's because you had Steve Minutian and house minority leader, Kevin McCarthy, essentially having to act like hostage negotiators in order to get Donald Trump to even sign this horrendous

Bill, they had to go to him.

They had to try to give him as much as possible while getting a little bit in return, uh, what they were giving him. We may not fully know, but what I'm assuming took place is that they had to tell him, you know, is at stake. Uh, control of the Senate is at stake, Leffler Purdue down there in Georgia. We got to get them a win. If we do not get people something, if we do not send out the checks, that's not going to happen. Uh, you name will be on them. That's good. Right? People are going to remember the Goodwill. Donald Trump gave me lots of money. In 2020, I got 1200 bucks back in April. You had 600 bucks now. Hey, that's pretty cool. He was a good guy. Maybe it'll help your reelection chances, whatever it is that they promised him, it worked so kudos to those very horrible human beings for actually doing something that, again, isn't really going to benefit people, but at the same time, it's still better than nothing. And honestly, that's what sucks about having to talk about this thing because yes, $600 is better than $0,

But $600 is still woefully inadequate to actually help the millions of people. Who've lost their jobs. And because he waited to sign the bill till Sunday on Saturday, the already extended unemployment benefits for those who had lost their jobs expired. So now in order to get the extra $300 a week, they have to go back and reapply for that. So you have now put an unnecessary burden on these out of work individuals. Um, uh, you also have no extension of the student loan moratorium. So coming, I think at the end of January, you're going, gonna have to start paying those back, regardless of your means, none of that even matters apparently. And of course the $600 per person is means tested. Uh, the means themselves by the way, are very low. You know, if you get 75, if you make 75,000 a year, uh, you get less than $600, which depending on where you live in this country, $75,000 may or may not be a lot of money.

And that's just a sad fact. So that's why these means testing for whatever program it is. Stimulus student loan, debt relief. What have you, that's crap. You could make $75,000 a year, but you could still be in debt, you know, do through, uh, you know, uh, due to, excuse me, whatever decisions have happened, maybe, you know, bad luck, maybe medical bills have befallen you. So you may make 75,000 in an area where that's good money, but you still don't have disposable income because all of it has to go to pay off the cancer treatment. It could be one of a million different things means testing is absolutely ridiculous. And anybody who pushes for that

Should be ashamed of themselves. It is what it is

Hearing reports. Now that there could be another vote coming up soon on a $2,000 stimulus check for Americans. But as it is right now, you're going to get the $600. Corporations are going to get billions of dollars. Foreign countries are getting hundreds and hundreds of millions of dollars of peace, a peace in aid. We get the table scraps and Minutian and McCarthy had to act as hostage

[inaudible] to even get Trump to agree to that pretty sad state of America. If you ask me.