A GOP congressman has hit back at Donald Trump’s ballroom and $1.8 billion slush fund as he urged MAGA colleagues to stand up to the president in the interest of Americans.
One week after Trump insulted his Fox News fiancee, Pennsylvania Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick has come out swinging as he moves to torpedo the president’s $1.8 billion “anti weaponization” fund with the help of Democrats.
“We’ve got half of this country living paycheck to paycheck,” Fitzpatrick, who is engaged to Fox’s White House correspondent Jacqui Heinrich, told CNBC on Tuesday.
“Many people in my community are stressing over the kitchen table this morning, figuring out how to make their weekly budget work. We shouldn’t be talking about ballrooms; we shouldn’t be talking about DOJ slush funds. That’s not what our country wants us to be talking about.”
Fitzpatrick, a former FBI agent who has served in the House of Representatives since 2017, is one of the few GOP members willing to speak up against Trump or his policies.
But this has raised the ire of the president, who hit out at the congressman by ranting at Heinrich and other reporters during a press gaggle last week.
“Well, her husband votes against me all the time. Can you imagine?” Trump said, not realizing the pair had not yet tied the knot.
“I don’t know what’s with him. You better ask what’s with him. Her husband, she’s married to a certain congressman. He likes voting against Trump. You know what happens with that? Doesn’t work out well. I don’t know why he does.”
But speaking on Squawk Box on Tuesday, Fitzpatrick made no apologies, standing up for his constituents and arguing that his GOP colleagues should do the same rather than be beholden to “any person or party.”
“There’s always pressure in the job, but it’s not going to deter me from doing my job, which is to represent the people that I represent in Bucks and Montgomery County, Pennsylvania,” he said.
“They’re my bosses. I don’t report to any person or any party in Washington, D.C. And by the way, that’s a perspective that every member of Congress should be taking.”
Fitzpatrick’s pushback comes amid broader concerns about Trump’s ballroom and so-called anti-weaponization fund. The fund allows people to seek compensation if they believe they were unfairly prosecuted by successive administrations, including rioters who assaulted police during the January 6 Capitol attack.
This has made it particularly controversial, with MAGA grifters now lining up for a taxpayer-funded cut, while Capitol Police have filed lawsuits against it.
Several Republicans have also hit back: North Carolina Senator Thom Tillis called the scheme “stupid on stilts”; former GOP Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell described it as “utterly stupid, morally wrong”; and Texas Senator Ted Cruz revealed how GOP Senators erupted last week as acting Attorney General Todd Blanche tried to defend it during a closed-door meeting.
“Fiery does not begin to cut it,” Cruz said Friday on his podcast. “My guess is there’re probably 45 senators in the room, at least half of them were blasting the attorney general, and they were p*****.”
Fitzpatrick, meanwhile, has joined forces with Democrat Rep. Tom Suozzi to introduce a bill designed to block the slush fund, which was announced last week as part of a backroom deal that also gave Trump some immunity from certain IRS audits.
“The purpose of our system of checks and balances is to hold each other accountable, and the president can’t just go spending $1.8 billion on a fund that will reward people that say that they’ve been aggrieved by the government, including people that came to the Capitol on January 6,” Suozzi told CNBC.
