Former president Donald Trump so viciously attacked the 13 Republicans who voted for the $1.2 trillion bipartisan infrastructure bill which passed the House that one of them was left noticeably upset by his rhetoric.
Mr Trump was speaking at a fundraising dinner for the GOP’s House campaign arm — the National Republican Congressional Committee — at his Doral, Florida resort when, according to a report in the New York Post, he began railing against the dozen GOP members who helped send the infrastructure bill to President Joe Biden’s desk.
One of the 13, New York’s Nicole Malliotakis, was reportedly left “visibly shaken” by Mr Trump’s attacks, the Post reported.
Ms Malliotakis, a former New York State Assembly member who is serving her first term in the House, represents a district encompassing New York City’s Staten Island and parts of Brooklyn. The infrastructure bill she supported is set to deliver billions of dollars worth of funding to transit and other infrastructure projects in the New York region, including a long-delayed modernisation of century-old rail tunnels leading into the city.
But her vote for the infrastructure bill which had passed the Senate with significant GOP support has made her and her 12 compatriots into pariahs among the pro-Trump wing of her party, who have suggested she should have voted against the bill for the sole purpose of denying Mr Biden and Democrats a legislative victory.
Some Republicans who remain loyal to the twice-impeached former president have called for the 13 pro-infrastructure GOP members — including Alaska Rep Don Young (the chamber’s longest serving Republican member) and New York Rep John Katko (the ranking GOP member on the House Homeland Security Committee) – to lose their committee assignments, while other members who voted for the bill, such as Michigan’s Fred Upton, have received vulgar death threats from Trump supporters since voting for it.
