Last week, the first part of President Joe Biden's infrastructure package passed the House months after passing the Senate, allowing Biden to sign the bill into law.
While Democrats are still hoping to pass a "soft" infrastructure package through the Senate via reconciliation, the bipartisan "hard" infrastructure package will allocate historic investments in bridges, roads, and public transportation across the country.
Nineteen Senate Republicans and thirteen House Republicans voted in favor of the bill, and Democrats soon began celebrating a major victory after months of wrangling in Congress.
Pro-Trump Republicans were, predictably, less celebratory. One GOP Congresswoman, Nicole Malliotakis of New York, absurdly credited the former President with getting the bill off the ground.
Watch below.
Throughout his presidency, Trump repeatedly tried and failed to secure a massive infrastructure bill. In 2017, then-President Trump proclaimed it was "Infrastructure Week"—a seven day effort to reach a bipartisan agreement on legislation to revitalize American infrastructure. This first effort was upended when Trump accused former FBI Director James Comey of lying to Congress, lurching the White House off message.
For the next two years, "Infrastructure Week" would be touted by the White House with no results, leading the term to signal what the New York Times called a "'Groundhog Day'-style fever dream doomed to be repeated."
The effort failed for the final time in 2019, when Trump said he would pursue no legislation while under investigation by the Democratic-led House of Representatives.
Nevertheless, Malliotakis—who voted yes on the bill—thanked Trump for supposedly contributing to its passage:
"President Trump laid the groundwork for this infrastructure to pass ... I'm happy and appreciative to President Trump for being one of the first to really talk about the need for infrastructure."
It's no wonder Malliotakis is scrambling to tie her support for the infrastructure bill to support for Trump. Trump won her district, NY-11, by 11 points in the 2020 presidential election. The former President lambasted Republicans who helped put the bipartisan bill past the finish line, and far-right elected officials like Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia and Madison Cawthorn of North Carolina have vowed to work against any Republicans who supported the legislation.
Malliotakis credited Trump as one of the first to talk about infrastructure, but people soon disputed these claims.
As the saying goes, "talk is cheap."
Though Malliotakis claims Trump began the earliest rumblings of infrastructure improvements, the vast majority of pro-Trump Republicans voted against it.
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