“Trump just threw away the rest of his Presidency.”
After President Trump signed a massive 2,323-page omnibus spending bill on Friday — one which conservative publications deemed “ an embarrassment and a disgrace” and Trump had initially threatened to veto — many conservative pundits, including some of Trump’s biggest fans, were incensed.
The bill gives a big boost to military funding (a major conservative point of emphasis), but it doesn’t defund Planned Parenthood — a l ongtime GOP promise — and adds roughly $1 trillion to the deficit. As right-wing podcast host Mark Pantano declared on Twitter, “ Trump just threw away the rest of his Presidency.”
Immigration restrictionists who have long demanded a border wall were particularly disappointed. Conservative radio host Rush Limbaugh described Trump’s signing the omnibus as “stabbing me in the back” because of its lack of border wall funding (the bill includes $1.6 billion for 30 miles of fencing and enhanced security measures, to which Breitbart said simply: “RIP BORDER WALL”).
The ire at Trump poured in from across the internet, particularly from conservatives who have long argued that Trumpism was a real political ideology — one that this omnibus bill would violate. Unfortunately, the fans of Trumpism keep getting confronted with the realities of the man himself.
From Ann Coulter, conservative pundit and author of In Trump We Trust:
From Amy Kremer, a former Tea Party activist and chair of two pro-Trump political action committees during the 2016 presidential campaign:
From Laura Ingraham, conservative pundit and host of The Ingraham Angle on Fox News:
From conservative writer Jesse Kelly:
A few hours after President Trump signed the omnibus, I spoke with Andrew Klavan, host of The Andrew Klavan Show hosted by the conservative website Daily Wire. He told me that Trump’s current problems are the same ones many conservatives pointed out during the 2016 primaries: “He’s not a detail guy and he’s not a spending hawk. He went out there [during the election] promising people that he’s not going to cut entitlements,” making it unlikely that Trump would then sign off on massive cuts to government spending. “One of the key objections to Donald Trump is that he’s got that inner Democrat. [Cutting spending] just doesn’t occur to him.”
Klavan added that much of the blame for the omnibus should go on the Republican Party. “I think that the GOP is so punch drunk from the media slapping them around that they just allow [Senate Minority Leader Chuck] Schumer and [House Minority Leader Nancy] Pelosi to just walk all over them, and Trump is not the guy who is paying attention.”
Schumer’s communications director, Matt House, seemed to agree:
