Donald Trump’s Veto Is No Longer Worth Anything

Now the Republican members of Congress are fed up with the unpredictability of their current president, Donald Trump. They overruled his defense budget veto − and showed that they still care about America’s security.

At the end of his term in office, even the Republicans are tired of the chaos that Donald Trump is so reliably causing. And a good many of Trump’s own party voted in the House of Representatives Tuesday to override the president’s veto on the defense budget. The Senate could follow suit on Wednesday.*

It’s a symbol of how much Trump’s power is dwindling even within his own party. At the same time, however, it is also a revolt against the carelessness with which Trump has endangered national security in recent years, often for personal reasons.

He had several reasons for opposing the defense budget, for example. The most important reason had to do with his personal campaign of revenge against major social media platforms, whose privileges he wanted to see withdrawn. This has nothing to do with defense, but Trump wanted it included in the budget bill.

The president did not like the restrictions that Congress imposed on him with respect to troop withdrawal. His plans to withdraw troops from Germany arose primarily from his aversion to Germany and especially his dislike for Chancellor Angela Merkel. The renaming of U.S. Army bases bearing the names of Confederate generals was also a thorn in Trump’s side, because nostalgic Southerners form the core of his base.

Trump likes to present himself as a bull dog when it comes to security. In fact, however, his personal likes or dislikes have made America more insecure in many ways, as the events of the past few weeks have shown. The massive Russian hack of U.S. agencies has demonstrated how much the Trump administration has neglected cybersecurity in relation to Moscow because the president has a strange kind of sympathy for Vladimir Putin, and therefore, no one in the U.S. security branches dared to pursue the issue aggressively.

Trump’s refusal to concede the election has also resulted in the fact that Joe Biden’s team has not received adequate security briefings before he takes office. Biden has complained about the lack of cooperation from the Pentagon, whose upper echelons were filled with yes-men by the president after the election.

Republican Members of Congress Dare Again

The defense budget veto is the culmination of many moments in Trump’s term when his narcissism has prevailed over America’s security interests. Because this increasingly jeopardizes the Republicans’ reputation as a party of national security, increasingly more Republican members of Congress are daring to vote against their president.

*Editor’s note: The Senate voted to override Trump’s veto of the defense bill on Jan. 1, 2021.