‘It’s clear he’s in charge now’: Lawmakers react to Trump’s ‘unprecedented’ involvement ahead of inauguration

Lawmakers and commentators think it’s “clear” Donald Trump is already in charge even though his inauguration is still weeks away.

As President Joe Biden winds down his presidency, Trump is behaving as though he is already in office by intervening with last week’s spending bill, issuing threats to retake the Panama Canal and asserting dominance over Greenland, according to The Hill.

“It’s clear he’s in charge now,” Republican Senator Lisa Murkowski of Alaska told the outlet, remarking on Trump’s influence over the chaotic spending bill when the government was just a few hours from a shutdown.

“Nobody is talking about, ‘Where’s Biden?’ in any of this. Trump is in charge,” she added. “Trump is in charge now, even without the election certification.”

Trump’s assertiveness, with his inauguration just weeks away, is “unprecedented,” according to Stephen S. Smith, a political science professor at Washington University in St. Louis.

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Smith noted that Trump, spurred on by billionaire ally and adviser Elon Musk, took GOP leaders by surprise when he proclaimed his opposition to Mike Johnson’s first bipartisan bill.

“Trump’s involvement is unprecedented,” he told The Hill. “I have no doubt he was being carefully advised about what was going on. Surely there must have been the thought that his open involvement — which would have been a form of criticizing the Republicans for something — would have only made it more difficult for the Senate Democrats to win some concessions from the House Republicans.”

Republican strategist Vin Weber told the outlet that the issue is more about Biden’s absence than Trump’s assertiveness.

“I’ve heard people criticize Trump for jumping in too soon,” Weber said. “I think the main point is that Biden has vacated the field and Trump has filled the vacuum.”

Weber added that it was “really telling” that Biden didn’t have much impact over last week’s spending bill chaos in Congress. “It was quite something to watch,” Weber said.

Other Republicans claim that Biden has already “checked out.”

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Republican Senator Thom Tillis of North Carolina told The Hill that Trump “has been more of a president the last month than President Biden’s been,” while Republican Senator John Cornyn of Texas said Biden “checked out a long time ago.”

“I don’t see a lot of leadership coming from the White House. We’re getting more White House leadership from Mar-a-Lago than we’re getting from the White House,” Tillis added.

Some Democrats thought Biden “could have been more vocal” about some of the proposals in the bill that Trump managed to remove, according to The Hill.

A Democratic senator, who spoke anonymously, conceded that the Biden administration was “out of energy.”

Democratic Senator Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut told The Hill he hadn’t “heard anything directly from the White House,” but added he wasn’t aware of conversations at a leadership level.

The White House pushed back against criticism and claimed their “maneuvering prevented a Republican-triggered Christmas shutdown.”

“President Biden and his team worked hand-in-hand with Leaders Jeffries and Schumer to leverage Republicans’ mistakes against them, guaranteeing that the American public knew the House GOP and Trump were breaking their word and putting tax breaks for the wealthy above troops and Social Security recipients — all at the direction of the richest man in the world,” White House senior deputy press secretary Andrew Bates told The Hill in a statement.