BUSTED: Trump threatened to torpedo spending bill unless a pet project of Ivanka’s was shoehorned in
While many of Donald Trump’s mental processes are fairly transparent, motivated by ego, greed, or narcissism, sometimes it takes a little digging to discern the motivations behind his decisions.
Congressman Elliot Engel (D-NY), the chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, provided some insight today on one of the reasons that the departing president has vowed to veto the year-end spending bill that includes the pandemic relief funds recently passed by Congress.
Representative Engel issued a statement this morning accusing Trump of opposing the bill because it failed to include funding for one of his daughter Ivanka Trump’s pet projects, a women’s economic empowerment program.
“Earlier this week, Congress passed the Omnibus spending bill, but without the key bipartisan State Department Authorization Act,” Rep. Engel’s statement begins. “Democrats and Republicans in both Houses had accomplished a goal not achieved in 17 years and agreed upon until this bill, but at the last minute, Ivanka Trump demanded that her self-styled women’s economic empowerment program be ‘airdropped’ into the measure.”
With “virtually all parties” on both sides of the aisle opposed to the First Daughter’s proposal, according to Engel, Congressional leaders had to do some fancy footwork to try to mollify the Trump administration.
“The White House threatened to veto the Omnibus if it contained bipartisan, bicameral State Department Authorization Act without this project,” Engel wrote. “So Majority Leader McConnell told negotiators to remove the State bill to placate the administration.”
Whatever the final fate of the spending bill and the pandemic stimulus legislation, the State Department will be suffering because of Trump’s petulant reaction to the rejection of Ivanka’s pet project.
It is just one more act of sabotage that the defeated presdident is undertaking against the interests of the nation as a whole to burn down the bridges as he makes his slow-motion retreat from power.
You can read the full statement from House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Elliot Engel below.
Follow Vinnie Longobardo on Twitter.
Original reporting by David Edwards at RawStory.
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