GOP SENATORS SHUN TRUMP THREAT TO VETO DEFENSE BUDGET

President Donald Trump’s threat to veto a defense bill if it does not repeal legal protections for social media companies faced stiff bipartisan opposition on Wednesday, setting the stage for a confrontation with lawmakers scrambling to pass the massive bill by year-end.

Unusually, members of his Republican Party broke from Trump to join Democrats in objecting to his threat to veto the annual National Defense Authorization Act, or NDAA, a $740 billion annual bill setting policy for the Pentagon, if it does not include a measure eliminating a federal law - known as Section 230 - protecting tech companies such as Facebook Inc. and Twitter Inc., Patricia Zengerle reported for Reuters.

“First of all, 230 has nothing to do with the military. And I agree with his sentiments. We ought to do away with 230, but you can’t do it in this bill. That’s not a part of the bill,” Senator Jim Inhofe, the Republican chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, told reporters.

Steny Hoyer, the No. 2 House Democrat, called Trump’s threat “shameless and indefensible.” Trump and many of his supporters have been calling for the repeal of Section 230 since social media companies began removing or flagging material deemed to be inaccurate, frequently including tweets from Trump. Republican House member Adam Kinzinger summed up the frustration of many with Trump with his own Tweet on Wednesday. “I will vote to override. Because it’s really not about you,” Kinzinger wrote.

Lawmakers announced on Wednesday that congressional negotiators had completed the conference report on the fiscal year 2021 NDAA, a compromise between separate versions of the bill passed earlier this year by the Republican-led Senate and Democratic-majority House of Representatives. Congressional aides said the final version of the NDAA does not include the Section 230 repeal demanded by Trump. The legislation also includes a provision that will strip the names of Confederate generals from military facilities, something that passed both the House and Senate with support from both parties earlier this year, but is also opposed by Trump. Critics said Trump apparently is ignorant of statutory construction since the issue of Big Tech cannot be covered by a defense spending bill.