He didn’t do the veto. But he did give a bizarre, discombobulated, raging speech to talk about how pissed he was that he wasn’t allowed to do the veto.
"We wanted to include DACA in this bill, but the Democrats wouldn't let us do it," he said in announcing that he signed the omnibus spending bill. Of course, he was the one who decided to rescind the program, and he who has flip-flopped on his immigration positions over and over again. "I do want the Hispanic community to know that Republicans are much more on your side than the Democrats who are using you for this purpose," he said, and "the Democrats did not want DACA in this bill." None of which has anything to do with reality, but that certainly wasn't going to stop Trump today.
Saying "I'll never sign another bill like this again," Trump railed about all the things he didn't get in the bill, complained that he was out-maneuvered by Democrats and that the Republican leadership was a mess. He pointed out that he didn't get his border wall, and admitted that he couldn't read the bill—"You tell me who can read that quickly," he said. So it's kind of unclear why he even had the "press conference," in which he answered one question. Apparently, he held it just to vent. And vent he did.
"There are a lot of things that I'm unhappy about in this bill," he said, after saying he had signed it. "There are a lot of things that we shouldn't have had in this bill." He then spent minutes lauding the massive defense spending in the bill, saying "we are creating what will be by far the strongest military we've ever had," reading through the notes his national security staff undoubtedly used to convince him to sign, to list all the weapons programs it's funding.
The Democrats, he said, forced the bill to be so huge so that he could get all that defense money. They weren't going to let him have it without the domestic spending. Because he's so angry about it, he is demanding that he gets a line-item veto (which the Supreme Court has ruled unconstitutional) and that the Senate get rid of the filibuster. Which had absolutely nothing to do with this spending bill, and which Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has said over and over again he's not going to get rid of. And he reiterated that just now.
Expect a great deal of rage tweeting from the orange buffoon this weekend.
