The White House on Thursday announced that President Donald Trump would be tapping a bipartisan group of lawmakers to help advise him on how to best revamp the American economy, which has suffered unprecedented losses amid the COVID-19 coronavirus pandemic. But in a truly Trumpian move, the president invited every Senate Republican to be a part of the congressional task force, save one: Utah Senator Mitt Romney.
Romney was the only member of the Republican Party who voted to convict and remove the president for abuse of power during the impeachment trial in the Senate earlier this year.
Soon after his vote, the White House began sending around a list of talking points encouraging Trump surrogates to ramp up attacks on Romney for breaking with the party, suggesting the senator’s vote was a display of “self-serving political expedience that has come to define his career.”
According to CNN White House Correspondent Kaitlan Collins, the Rebpublican Party’s 2012 presidential nominee was omitted from the task force despite President Trump reviewing and approving the list which included more than 20 congressional Democrats.
Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), who voted to convict Trump on charges of abuse of power and obstruction of Congress, said he was honored to serve on the task force to help reboot the U.S. economy.
“I am honored to be asked to serve on this bipartisan presidential task force to prepare for reopening our economy,” Durbin said in a statement Thursday. “We still have work to do to stop the spread of this virus, but we need to think in positive terms of the day America once again will be open for business.”
Former GOP attorney for the House Government Reform and Oversight Committee Sophia A. Nelson called the president a “petty SOB” over apparently targeted Romney slight.
At an earlier stage of the coronavirus crisis, Romney self-quarantined out of an abundance of caution.
When Trump got wind of that, he responded, “Gee, that’s too bad.”
[image via Drew Angerer_Getty Images]
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