Watch Sen. David Perdue’s Ad Touting ‘Direct Checks’ He ‘Delivered’ in $900 Billion Covid Relief Bill — That Trump Just Blew Up

Sen. David Perdue‘s latest campaign ad boasts about the Georgia Republican’s recent vote for the $900 billion Covid relief bill and says that he “delivered” by getting “direct checks to Georgians.”

One small problem: President Donald Trump just blew up those claims with his surprise, 11th-hour refusal to sign the bill and instead make new demands for larger payouts.

In one of the two tightly contested Senate runoff races in that state, Perdue tried to pitch his candidacy by touting his ability to come through for those struggling economically from the pandemic. The 30-second ad began running on Tuesday just hours after Congress passed the Covid stimulus, but its fait accompli nature was publicly undermined later that same day when Trump slammed the relief package as a “disgrace” by citing a numerous other non Covid-releated expenditures that were not, in fact, part of the coronavirus bill but were instead included in a companion, omnibus government spending package. The president then threatened not to sign the bill unless it the direct payout was raised from $600 to $2,000 per person, leaving Congress and his party’s Senate leadership scrambling as to how to respond.

Perdue taking credit for the $600 “direct checks” in the Covid bill stands in stark contrast to an interview he gave to a local Georgia newspaper back in May, however. During that Q & A, Perdue was asked about the initial CARES Act’s $1,200 direct payouts and he acknowledged: “I personally opposed it.” But last week, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell admitted that Perdue and fellow Georgia GOP Sen. Kelly Loeffler were “getting hammered” in their re-election campaigns over the Senate’s months-long failure to approve additional stimulus funding.

The timetable for passing the Covid stimulus is now completely up in the air, after Trump left the White House for Mar-A-Lago on Wednesday and the GOP Congressional leadership was still unsure how to respond to his demands. Previously, the Treasury Dept. had estimated that Americans could’ve begun to receive their latest coronavirus relief checks by next week, if the bill had been signed on Tuesday, as the White House originally promised.