“Republicans are in grave danger if they continue to do the very swamp crap the president ran against,” Representative Chip Roy of Texas said in an interview, noting that it made it harder to run against Democrats as socialists when “establishment Republicans are passing massive spending and programs they then complain about.”
Mr. Roy said that if Mr. Trump vetoed the measure, lawmakers could devise a bill extending paycheck protection for businesses, hash out a compromise on unemployment benefits and direct payments, and pass legislation keeping the government open until the new Congress decided on spending levels next year. But few other lawmakers said they believed Congress would reconvene to craft a new measure during the holidays.
Michael Steele, the former chairman of the Republican National Committee and a critic of the president, noted that the foreign aid proposals to which the president was objecting were proposed by his own administration.
“The Republicans are getting punked again by the guy they shilled for, who does not care about their interests or any principle they stand for,” Mr. Steele said. “He made a four-minute video in the White House ranting about things his own administration did, and meanwhile some mom is trying to figure out how she can avoid eviction and get Christmas presents under the tree for her kids. That’s the heartbreaking part.”
Republicans in the two chambers were already at odds over the election results.
Many of the Senate Republicans are ready to move on from the Trump era while House Republicans, including the top leadership, signed on to a brief supporting a Texas lawsuit in hopes that the Supreme Court would overturn the results.
Mr. McConnell has tried to shut down the prospect of blocking the Electoral College results in the Senate next month, but House Republican leaders have not done anything in public to discourage hard-liners from trying such a move in the Democratic-controlled chamber. After Senator John Thune of South Dakota, the No. 2 Republican, told reporters this week that such an effort “would go down like a shot dog” in the Senate, Mr. Trump tweeted on Tuesday: “South Dakota doesn’t like weakness. He will be primaried in 2022, political career over!!!”
Reporting was contributed by Jonathan Martin from Washington, Ben Casselman and Nicholas Fandos from New York, and Rick Rojas from Atlanta.
