It was practically Pavlovian. Cable news was reporting that President Trump wasn’t going to keep his promise to sign the tax bill before Christmas — primarily because doing so before the end of the year would trigger automatic spending cuts and because it would give companies more time to prepare for the changes to their payroll tax rolls — so Trump impulsively put together a last minute signing ceremony at the Oval Office to prove them wrong.
According to the account in today’s The New York Times, Trump demanded that his staff pull together a bill signing ceremony because the bill needed to be signed “now.”
“We did a rushed job today,” Mr. Trump said at the bill signing. “It’s not fancy, but it’s the Oval Office. It’s the great Oval Office.”
By falling prey to his own ego once again, Trump demonstrated that he cares more about his own PR than he does about anyone affected by the automatic spending cuts to literally dozens of federal programs, most significantly Medicare, which can see up to 4% of its budget cut.
Trump revealed the true motivation for the entire Republican reverse-Robin Hood tax strategy when he said as he signed the bill:
“Corporations are literally going wild over this.”
Of course they are. Their lobbyists essentially wrote the bill for the Republican Congress and paid for its passage through their campaign contribution.
Trump typically played his beleaguered victim card, tweeting earlier in the morning his doubts that the mainstream media will be giving him the credit he thinks he deserves for the record number of accomplishments that in his own mind he believes he’s achieved.
With all my Administration has done on Legislative Approvals (broke Harry Truman’s Record), Regulation Cutting, Judicial Appointments, Building Military, VA, TAX CUTS & REFORM, Record Economy/Stock Market and so much more, I am sure great credit will be given by mainstream news?
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 22, 2017
The delusional notion that Trump has of his accomplishments belies the truth that the only significant achievements of the administration are the dismantling of every positive, progressive policy that the Obama administration initiated and the economically regressive tax bill he just turned into the law of the land with the swipe of the pen in his tiny hands.
The only way to react positively to Trump’s signing of the tax bill is by imagining that what he’s actually signing is the death warrant for the Republican party’s electoral chances in the 2018 midterms, and consequently, the intitiation of his own impeachment process. Now that’s the kind of Christmas present we all need.
