Republicans were about to take a victory lap on housing. Then Trump blew it up.
President Donald Trump reminded lawmakers Wednesday that he can upend rare bipartisan accomplishments in the time it takes to post on Truth Social.
Trump blindsided congressional leaders Wednesday when he abruptly canceled a signing ceremony for a major housing bill, insisting instead that Republicans first pass the SAVE America Act — legislation that lacks the votes to clear the Senate. The move caught lawmakers so off guard that some House Republicans were already making their way to the scheduled signing ceremony, where reporters informed them that Trump was no longer coming.
The stage was literally set.
As Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., stepped off the Senate floor, MS NOW informed him that Trump was withholding his signature. Reporters asked for his reaction.
“At this point, I don’t have any observations,” Thune said.
House Financial Services Committee Chairman Rep. French Hill, R-Ark., who spent months negotiating the bill across the aisle and between chambers, was in the middle of touting the legislation at a press conference with House GOP leaders when the president suddenly withdrew his support.
In an instant, those Republican leaders who had planned a victory lap were now speaking in circles to try to make sense of Trump’s decision. The credit-claiming exercise quickly became a defensive spin class. The stage that Capitol Hill workers had assembled in Statuary Hall for Trump’s signing ceremony was quietly dismantled.
The housing bill was supposed to be one of the GOP’s clearest answers to voter concerns about affordability. The legislation sailed through both chambers with overwhelming bipartisan support, and Republicans were eager to argue that they — not Democrats — had delivered a meaningful response to rising housing costs.
But what took months of negotiations was undone in seconds, leaving Republicans to publicly explain a decision that they privately found baffling.
“We saw glimpses of this during Trump’s first administration,” a senior GOP aide told MS NOW, “but never in my lifetime have I seen a president so deliberately attempt to lose majorities for his own party.”
Democrats, meanwhile, were happy to take credit for the legislation — and to argue that this was just more evidence that Trump does not actually care about affordability.
“About two minutes ago, we were all supposed to be down in the rotunda while Donald Trump signed it into law,” Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., a lead sponsor of the housing bill, said on MS NOW. “But Trump has now said, nope, he’s not going to do that. You know what that says to me? It says to me that Donald Trump just doesn’t care about the cost squeeze on American families.”
She noted that Trump had said affordability is a “made-up word” that Democrats invented, and that he “loves inflation.”
“Yeah, he does,” Warren said. “He doesn’t care about high prices for millions of people across this country. What he does care about is Donald Trump and nothing else.”
Trump’s decision also puts Republicans in a political bind. Many still want to tout the bipartisan legislation, but few are eager to cross the president.
The strategy also creates a standoff Trump is unlikely to win. He is attempting to use a popular measure — the bipartisan housing bill — as leverage to force action on an unpopular package, the highly partisan SAVE America Act. The legislation does not currently have even 50 Republican votes in the Senate, let alone the 60 votes needed to overcome a filibuster.
Trump’s tactic is likely to fail, and it is all but certain to create political headaches for Republicans along the way.
It reopens divisions within the party, raises expectations among conservative voters for legislation that is unlikely to become law and shifts attention away from one of the GOP’s few bipartisan legislative achievements.
It has also just frustrated Republican lawmakers.
Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, who has recently taken a more combative tone with the president after losing his primary, said the bill would become law because there is enough support to override a veto, suggesting that Republicans would break with the president if needed.
“I’m not too concerned about the legislation,” Cornyn said, “but it does inject a little more chaos into what I thought was a great opportunity for us.”
Cornyn said Trump’s actions were consistent with his larger pattern of blowing up the Senate’s best-laid plans, whether it be indefinitely delaying Jay Clayton’s nomination as director of national security or refusing to sign a FISA extension without the SAVE America Act attached. When MS NOW asked why Trump kept surprising lawmakers, Cornyn’s answer nodded at the frustration.
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“It’s a mystery,” he said.
Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, sounded equally baffled, telling reporters his announcement on Wednesday was “a complete surprise to me.”
“It has strong, bipartisan bicameral support. The lead author is a Republican senator,” Collins said. “The bill went through the regular process and it addresses a key issue for American families.”
Still, some Republicans tried to defend Trump.
When asked about Trump’s sudden announcement, House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., told MS NOW he “wouldn’t call it a blindside.”
“He’s been saying consistently for months that the SAVE America Act was a top priority,” Johnson said. “I talked to him about it this morning, about an hour before he made that announcement. I convinced him that I thought that the housing bill fills his priorities, and it’s good policy.”
But as the day went on Wednesday, after Trump had returned from a tense meeting with Senate Republicans on Capitol Hill, the president began actually raising concerns with the legislation.
“I made billions of dollars with housing. I know housing better than anybody maybe anywhere,” Trump said Wednesday in the Oval Office. “It’s all about the interest rate. Lower the interest rate, you can have all the housing you want.”
“I don’t want to hurt people that own houses,” Trump said, appearing to reference concerns that increasing the housing supply could lower home values.
If Trump ultimately follows through on a veto — and whether Republicans sustain it — the move could be a political gift for Democrats.
About two-thirds of Americans disapprove of Trump’s handling of the economy. His disapproval on inflation is even worse, with most Americans saying Trump’s policies had made economic conditions worse and increased the cost of living.
Democrats may prefer to enact the bipartisan legislation, but politically, they may settle for Trump and Republicans standing in the way of a housing bill aimed at addressing affordability.
For now, Democrats are content to point to the episode as evidence that Trump is complicating one of Congress’ few bipartisan accomplishments.
“The most common question I get is, ‘Why can’t you guys get things done?’” Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., told MS NOW. “Well, we got this bill done by an overwhelming bipartisan majority. And now the president is refusing to sign it.”
Mychael Schnell and Jack Fitzpatrick contributed to this report.
Lillie Boudreaux
