By: Evan Mei
President Trump has tried to bypass Congress to provide COVID-19 relief during the absence of a broad agreement, resulting in confusion on Sunday for millions of Americans and many businesses scrambling to find aid after the unemployment benefits expired.
Negotiations with the Democrats have still gotten nowhere, and Trump administration officials spent a long day on the defense after Trump performed some questionable executive actions. Sometimes they even contradicted each other as they tried to figure out and explain how such measures could work and their speed in providing relief.
When asked on television on Sunday, the Trump administration was very adamant and insisted that Americans would get all the aid promised by Trump, including a $400 weekly supplement to unemployment stimulus checks.
However, this funding might be based on chance after an agreement made by state officials, who are struggling to make up for such a gargantuan task amid budget shortfalls and the siphoning of federal aid, which was supposed to fund disaster relief during hurricane season.
Trump signed a whole slew of measures on Saturday, including an intention to revive unemployment benefits and to address the eviction ban.
But it might be much longer than expected for the results of the measures to appear. So far, they are very unlikely to have a meaningful impact, since they have not provided direct aid of any sort to small businesses that are struggling to make it through the pandemic.
“The president’s meager, weak and unconstitutional actions further demand that we have an agreement,” Ms. Pelosi said on Fox News Sunday. She told Chris Wallace, the show’s host, that “clearly you don’t have an understanding of what is happening here.”
Before Trump boarded the Air Force One in New Jersey, where he went to a fund-raiser after a weekend at his personal golf club, Trump told reporters that he would be willing to talk to Ms. Pelosi, whom he had not talked to one-on-one for nearly a year.
Mr. Trump’s trade adviser, Peter Navarro, said on Meet the Press that it was Congress that forced Trump to place executive orders. Navarro said, “The Lord and the Founding Fathers created executive orders because of partisan bickering and divided government.”