The real reason Donald Trump just tanked the stimulus negotiations with Pelosi and Schumer

| 6:00 pm EDT August 7, 2020
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Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer met with Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin today to try to hammer out a coronavirus financial relief package. There was good reason to expect it to go well, considering Mnuchin helped convince Donald Trump to agree to the previous relief package.

But now multiple major news outlets are reporting that today’s negotiations went nowhere, largely because Mnuchin was unwilling to give even an inch. This is odd, considering Mnuchin’s previous willingness to compromise, and the fact that the Trump regime does not have the upper hand here. American voters want financial relief. The last thing Donald Trump needs right now are these headlines about how he and his people are refusing to let it happen. So what’s going on?

The only reason for Mnuchin to behave like this today is if he was acting under orders from Donald Trump. It’s clear that Trump didn’t want any deal to be reached today. When you couple this with his threat earlier this week to simply make the relief package happen through executive order, it’s entirely possible that he mistakenly believes he can do that.

Or it could be that the increasingly mercurial Donald Trump ordered Mnuchin to stonewall today, simply because Trump was in a prickly mood, or had a bad day on the golf course. Let’s not fall into the trap of believing that someone as scattered and befuddled as Trump has a coherent plan, or is making decisions that are to his own benefit. The guy is lost in the weeds.