Mnuchin's legacy up in flames

They're all going up in flames here at the end. They all deserve it.

Mnuchin had emerged with the unique ability to walk a tightrope between Trump and congressional leaders, serving as an emissary in difficult negotiations. That all ended on Tuesday, when Trump posted a video on Twitter ridiculing the agreement.

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[Trump's] demand for $2,000 stimulus checks is a direct rejection of the $600 checks that Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin had personally proposed and negotiated with Democrats and Republicans. Now, Trump’s rejection of the deal has confounded many leaders on Capitol Hill because they had thought Mnuchin negotiated the package on behalf of the president. The treasury chief’s standing with many lawmakers is now in tatters just days before a full-blown crisis is set to occur.

  WaPo

Oh well, he's only got a few weeks left anyway.

The president’s denunciation of the agreement represented a stunning public broadside against his own treasury secretary, who for four years loyally shielded the president’s tax returns, endured repeated presidential tirades in private, and defended even Trump’s most incendiary and contradictory remarks.

Where have we heard that story before?

[Mnuchin] rejected House Democrats’ attempt to secure Trump’s tax returns, despite a 1924 law explicitly giving them authority to obtain the documents. He defended the president’s handling of protests by white nationalists in Charlottesville in 2017, as well as the president’s derogatory remarks of Black House Democrats.

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The president has privately complained to congressional Republicans that Mnuchin was “giving away the store” in negotiations to congressional Democrats and wondered if he was not pushing back hard enough against House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.).

Trump has also repeatedly berated Mnuchin, fuming at his treasury secretary over small-business aid that went to the Los Angeles Lakers and launching into an explosive tirade over Federal Reserve Chair Jerome H. Powell. Mnuchin in 2017 recommended to the president the selection of Powell.

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Mnuchin has been a very positive force,” said Sen. Mark R. Warner (D-Va.), who became close with Mnuchin and goes for long bike rides with him. “But everyone who has ever tried to speak for Donald Trump has had their legs cut out from under them eventually.”

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“Loyalty and assistance to President Trump generally gets rewarded with humiliation. This is how it ends for a lot of people who work for the guy,” said Brian Riedl, a conservative policy expert at the Manhattan Institute, a right-leaning think tank. “Secretary Mnuchin has been completely embarrassed.”

Does this look like someone who CAN be embarrassed?

In addition to a possible government shutdown on Tuesday, the entire emergency relief package is in jeopardy. The $600 stimulus checks Mnuchin had promised would be sent later this week cannot be sent if the bill isn’t signed into law. And a range of other emergency relief programs that were part of the package, from rental protections to small-business aid, airline assistance and vaccine distribution money, are also now frozen. Congressional leaders have signaled they will make one last attempt to avert a shutdown on Monday, but their options are dwindling.

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“We’ve been assured that the president would sign the bill, and I have no reason to believe that Secretary Mnuchin didn’t believe that,” Sen. Roy Blunt (R-Mo.), a member of Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell’s leadership team, told reporters on Thursday. Mnuchin had described the bipartisan deal as “fabulous” one day before Trump called it a “disgrace.”

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Mnuchin was blindsided by the video despite spending months as Trump’s principal negotiator with Congress on the aid package, according to two administration officials with knowledge of the matter.

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[A]ides say the two have barely spoken since. It remains unclear if Trump will sign the bill or veto it.

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The $600 payments were Mnuchin’s idea and formed the centerpiece of a proposal sent by the White House to congressional Democrats earlier this month. The details of that plan were public 13 days before the president made his objections public.

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Trump also attacked the foreign aid package included in a government spending bill coupled with the coronavirus relief package. The bill passed last week had more money for some of these programs than Trump had sought in his budget proposal earlier this year, but congressional leaders did not expect Trump to raise any objections to the funding after it was passed because aides had signed off on the package beforehand.

Trump’s shocking move to possibly blow up the agreement appears to have been his idea alone, according to two people briefed on the matter by White House staff.

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Trump decided to risk torpedoing the effort while raging against congressional Republicans on Twitter for not supporting his effort to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election. Trump has also expressed anger at congressional Democrats for not agreeing to a stimulus package before the presidential election.

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The president has not called congressional Democratic leaders in more than a year.

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The result is that Trump’s final economic act in office could be to block an emergency relief package negotiated by his treasury secretary even as the U.S. economy is battered by a surge in coronavirus cases and a new wave of shutdowns.

As many as 14 million jobless Americans received their last unemployment benefits on Saturday. Millions more could lose their homes as an eviction moratorium expires at the end of the year. Both these cliffs would have been avoided had the president signed the stimulus deal.

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“He’s just angry at everybody and wants to inflict as much pain on Congress as possible,” one person briefed by White House officials on the matter said.

It's not limited to Congress.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.