# Defining congressional negotiation before Election Day.
In The
WASHINGTON —
President Donald Trump sold himself to Americans in 2016 as the ultimate
deal-maker. Amid talks that represent one of his final shots at a significant
response to what may be the biggest crisis of his presidency — he has notably
embraced a very different role but as he runs for re-election.
The two lead
Democratic negotiators Trump has had no contact with— House Speaker Nancy
Pelosi of California and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer of New York — and
he has deferred to his aides on the substance of a bill.
Following a
well-established pattern, the president has largely stayed removed from
negotiations over a new coronavirus relief bill that would resume federal
unemployment benefits and protect millions of people from eviction, White House
officials said.
While Trump
has resumed regular public comments on the pandemic, he has delegated much of
the day-to-day response to Vice President Mike Pence, who travels more often to
the most affected states, is in regular contact with governors and leads
federal coronavirus task force meetings — which the president doesn't regularly
attend.
White House
press secretary Kayleigh McEnany said Tuesday that he was involved
"through his chief of staff and through his secretary of the
Treasury."
"He's
regularly updated," she said. "I was just in the Oval Office with
him, and the chief of staff was updating him on that very measure."
"30,000-foot
view," The
person said the president provided guidance from a with very few red lines. A
person close to Trump said he left it largely to chief of staff Mark Meadows
and Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin to "crystallize" what would be
acceptable to the Republican base in negotiating a deal.
Apparent
Trump's lack of direct involvement in the stimulus talks fits with his broader
response to policy pushes in general and the coronavirus response in
particular. While the Americans president has made recent moves to appear more
engaged after aides told him that polling showed that the majority of Americans
disapproved of his handling of the crisis, his involvement has remained
limited.
A
20-minute news conference: He traveled to North Carolina last month to visit a lab involved in
vaccine production, but he was at the facility for only an hour, during which
he gave. He held a meeting on coronavirus and hurricane preparations while in
Florida for campaign events. During a trip to Texas, one of the hardest-hit
states this summer, he attended a fundraiser and visited an oil rig, but he had
no specific meetings about the state's response to the pandemic.
But there
are no plans for ambitious policy pushes, a national consolidation of testing
or any defined presidential action in what may be the final concrete federal
response to the virus before Election Day White House officials have set up new
messaging efforts to raise Trump's visibility, Instead, Trump continues to Take
a wait-and-see approach to negotiations, pointing to his team's involvement-but
not planning his own.
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