Facing pressure over Republican opposition to his ‘big, beautiful bill,’ President Donald Trump snapped at a reporter in the Capitol Tuesday.
The moment came when a reporter asked Trump to respond to comments by conservative Rep. Andy Harris saying Trump had failed to persuade enough critics to vote for the massive trillion-dollar bill including major tax cuts.
‘We’re still along ways away,’ said Rep. Andy Harris, R-Md., who heads the conservative House Freedom Caucus.
‘Who do you work for?’ Trump asked the reporter, who responded that he was affiliated with NOTUS, a digital nonprofit owned by the Albritton Journalism Institute.
‘Who?’ Trump asked, prompting the reporter to repeat the name of his outlet. ‘I don’t even know what the hell that is – get yourself a real job,’ he sneered.
The outburst came as Trump and his White House team are confronting pressure from multiple directions on the bill.
Conservatives including Freedom Caucus members have said the bill doesn’t go far enough in identifying spending cuts to bring down the nation’s spiralling $36 trillion debt. It was among the reasons Moody’s cited for its credit downgrade of the U.S.
Trump also tore into House conservative Thomas Massie of Kentucky, who opposes the bill. ‘I think he is a grandstander, frankly,’ Trump said. ‘I think he should be voted out of office.’ He also admonished conservatives not to ‘f*** with Medicaid,’ the government insurance program that millions of poor families rely on.
President Donald Trump is running into House opposition from conservative Republicans as well as moderates as he pushes for passage of his ‘big, beautiful bill’
A comparatively moderate faction is also putting up resistance, demanding the bill raise the cap on state and local tax deductions that is hammering homeowners in his district.
The current cap imposed by Trump’s 2017 tax cuts is set at $10,000. The bill as drafted raises it to $30,000 but only for individuals earning less than $400,000 per year.
The dissidents want more to account for skyrocketing housing costs estate in their districts.
‘There’s some people that want a couple of things that maybe I don’t like or that they’re not going to get,’ Trump said before the closed door meeting with House Republicans.
Trump used the meeting to push back at Rep. Mike Lawler, a potential candidate for governor who hails from his former home state.
Congressman Mike Lawler came out against the SALT provisions in Trump’s bill
‘I know your district better than you do. If you lose because of SALT, you were going to lose anyway,’ Trump said, Fox News reported.
Lawler has been telling Republicans Trump’s ‘big, beautiful’ bill, which is the only bill this year protected by special rules barring a Senate filibuster, will fail without a deal with lawmakers seeking to boost the deduction.
But Trump attacked the policy move as coming from Blue states. ‘They’re all Democrat states,’ Trump said.
‘SALT is a very interesting thing,’ Trump said of the deduction for State and Local Taxes, before ripping Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker as someone who ‘is going nowhere’ and the ‘worst governor in the country.’ Then he attacked ‘Gavin Newscum’ of California.
Facing pressure over Republican opposition to his ‘big, beautiful bill,’ President Donald Trump snapped at a reporter in the Capitol Tuesday
‘Those are the people that want this and they’re Democrat states. They’re all Democrat states,’ Trump fumed, despite House Republicans from New York leading the charge to lift the cap, which dates to Trump’s 2017 tax cuts.
‘We’re going to be making a couple of tweaks. We don’t want to benefit Democrat governors,’ Trump added. Both Pritzker and Gavin Newsom are potential Democratic contenders for president in 2028.
The SALT cap is set to expire in 2025, so some moderates want to let it simply expire. The Tax Policy Center estimates that raising the cap to $20,000 would cost $600 billion compared to the current baseline.
‘Who do you work for?’ Trump asked the reporter
