More Financial Relief for Americans with Trump’s Latest Executive Order

BEDMINSTER, KOMPAS.com – President Donald Trump signed an executive order that will extend financial relief for Americans affected by the coronavirus pandemic.

The financial assistance, signed on Saturday, came as various polls show a large proportion of voters are unsatisfied with President Donald Trump’s handling of the Covid-19 crisis.

The four measures stipulated in the executive order marked a presidential show of strength.

Trump’s Republican party and White House team failed to agree with its opponent, US Democrats in Congress, on a stimulus package.

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The package aimed to prevent vulnerable Americans from falling through the cracks during these remarkably difficult times.

"We've had it and we're going to save American jobs and provide relief to the American workers," Trump said at a press conference at his golf club in Bedminster, New Jersey, where he was spending the weekend.

With double-digit unemployment, disruption to businesses from social distancing rules, and persistent coronavirus spread, many Americans had been relying on relief measures approved earlier by Congress, but which mostly expired in July.

Trump said his decision to circumvent Congress with executive actions would mean relief money getting "rapidly distributed."

In reality, his measures are likely to face court challenges because Congress controls federal spending, and in any case, they may add up to less money than initially appears.

For Trump, lagging badly in the polls against his Democratic rival Joe Biden ahead of the November 3 presidential election, the orders were partly about showing he is in charge.

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He turned the signing ceremony in the ballroom of the golf club into an assault on his opponents and threw in several false claims about his accomplishments in office.

To cheers from club members invited to watch the event, Trump insulted the Democratic "crazy" leader of the House of Representatives Nancy Pelosi, denounced Biden as "far left," and claimed that Democrats want to "steal the election."

Biden called Trump's orders Saturday "a series of half-baked measures."