Trump's $2,000 checks push costs him the WSJ editorial board
President Trump has lost the support of another Murdoch-owned, usually pro-Trump editorial board.
In a Tuesday editorial, The Wall Street Journal's editorial board, typically on the side of the president, delivered some harsh words for his push to increase the $600 coronavirus stimulus checks to $2,000. The measure is opposed by Republicans "for good reason," the editorial board writes, and Trump's attempts to make it happen anyway could cost the GOP its remaining power in the Senate.
Trump's insistence on the $2,000 checks puts him in an unusual spot. While "his own Treasury Secretary, Steven Mnuchin, negotiated the $600 figure," and much of the GOP opposes a larger sum, Trump "decided that wasn't enough," the editorial board writes. It's clear that this is just Trump "lashing out at anyone who won't indulge his hopeless campaign to overturn" the election, the board explains. But it would add trillions of dollars to the deficit and leaves Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) with a "tough call," they write.
McConnell now has to decide whether to oppose Trump just days before a Senate runoff election in Georgia, or hold the vote and "split the GOP caucus and upset fiscally conservative voters," the board says. Either one "amounts to a Donald Trump in-kind contribution to Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and [President-elect] Joe Biden," the board continues. And "if Republicans lose the two Georgia seats and their majority, Republicans across the country should know to thank Mr. Trump for their 2021 tax increase," the board finishes.
The Rupert Murdoch-owned New York Post also called out Trump in a Monday editorial, this time for organizing an "undemocratic coup" to try to overturn the 2020 election. The editorial implores him to end his "dark charade" so his initiatives aren't overturned with Democratic wins in the Georgia Senate races.
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