Day 1,285: Trump whines about Twitter trending topics being ‘illegal’ while GOP tries to take COVID-19 cash for military jets

Donald Trump dubiously announced Sunday that he’d be too focused on COVID-19 and the economy in three weeks to throw out the first pitch of a baseball game. The weekend golf and the dozens of tweets on Monday immediately threw all sorts of cold water on that claim.

Trump spent much of the day retweeting right-wing talking heads, including those spewing propaganda about Hillary Clinton and Russia. He also cried about Twitter’s “trending” algorithm, alleging a conspiracy theory that the company is making him look “as bad as possible,” which is “illegal”.

There’s no basis for any of Trump’s claims. Even if his preposterous allegations were true, there’s nothing illegal there.

Meanwhile, Republicans were trying to take money from Americans who need it most. While the previous federal unemployment benefit was $600 per week, in their latest bill, Senate Republicans want to slash that number to $200 so they can spend billions on things like military jets and ships.

Republicans threw another $1.75 billion at a new FBI building, which left one of the stimulus bill’s chief negotiators fumbling for a link to COVID-19.

Asked Monday what a new FBI building had to do with the novel coronavirus, Sen. Richard C. Shelby (R-Ala.), a key negotiator of the stimulus package, paused and said, “Good question.”

Shelby, chair of the Senate Appropriations Committee, said that for some items the bill had to “stretch the link” to the pandemic.

“This is an administration proposal to move on with the FBI. They need a new FBI building down the street; it’s not safe to work in, you know, and so forth,” he said.

Trump is left on an island, tilting at Twitter windmills. And Republicans are in the next room trying to figure out how to use a pandemic to funnel money away from the people who need it most and into their own pet projects.

1,285 days in, 177 to go

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