In a surprise move, Trump scraps signing ceremony for bipartisan housing bill

Since Donald Trump’s second term as president began, the grand total of major bipartisan legislative breakthroughs has been zero. That is, until this week, when the Republican-led House easily passed a landmark housing bill on a 358-32 vote. The move followed a similarly lopsided 85-5 vote in the GOP-led Senate, sending the bill to the White House to become law.

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The legislation, several months in the making, was poised to be the single greatest accomplishment of the current Congress. It’s not perfect, and it was nearly derailed several times by Republican infighting, but as Democratic Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, one of the principal co-authors of the bill, explained via social media, “I don’t say this often these days, but Congress actually passed something good. My bipartisan housing bill to build more housing, lower costs, and stop private equity’s housing grab is becoming law.”

White House officials told news organizations that the president would sign the bill into law on Wednesday afternoon, and I half-expected Trump to start trying to take credit for the breakthrough, despite the fact that he consistently told lawmakers for months not to bother working on the issue.

But that’s not what he did.

Just a few hours before the scheduled signing ceremony, Trump published an item to his social media platform downplaying the importance of the bill, which seemed like an odd thing to do: Instead of taking the win and giving his party a much-needed pre-midterm boost, the president was stepping on the only bipartisan success story of his term.

A half-hour later, he went considerably further, publishing this statement online: