After months of publicly acknowledging that President Biden and Democrats were always going to pass a reconciliation bill to invest in American families alongside a bipartisan infrastructure bill, Mitch McConnell and Senate Republicans are now absurdly pretending as if they were “blindsided” so they have an excuse to walk away from a deal that the American people want.

Seriously? This is peak gaslighting. Republicans stood next to Biden as he told reporters “there is going to be a two-track system” and have acknowledged that reality for a long time now. 

President Biden and Democrats have made “100% clear” from the start that they were on a two-track approach — it was even part of the bipartisan negotiations.

NBC News’ Benjy Sarlin: “D’s made 100% clear they were on two-track approach from start, which was assumption of everyone involved in talks -Pelosi said she’d link the two bills shortly before deal announcement, D’s were headed that direction”

Republicans have spent weeks signaling they were always going to use a bipartisan deal to try and block a reconciliation bill — clearly they knew it was coming.

Politico: “Republicans plot an infrastructure 2-step: Spend more, then kill Biden’s agenda”

Politico’s Burgess Everett: “Moran was saying openly he wanted bipartisan deal to hurt the reconciliation bill.”

Washington Post’s Seung Min Kim: “The Republican play clearly was to get a bipartisan infrastructure package signed into law, while hoping the second package falls under the weight of Dems in disarray on the Hill. So yes, they knew there were two tracks. But Biden’s veto threat yesterday ruins their strategy.”

Any Republican that claims they were “blindsided” by a reconciliation bill is blatantly lying. Republicans publicly admitted they knew this was coming.

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell in a press conference on June 15, 2021:  “I think the majority leaders indicated there will be a reconciliation effort. I think what they’re wrestling with is, what will it contain? So, we are anticipating at some point getting a reconciliation bill.” 

Senator Roy Blunt on Fox News Sunday on May 12, 2021: “My advice to the White House has been, take that bipartisan win, do this in a more traditional infrastructure way, and then if you want to force the rest of the package on Republicans in the Congress and the country, you can certainly do that.”

Senator Rob Portman on CNBC’s Squawkbox on June 24, 2021: “Democrats are going to move forward with a broad reconciliation.” 

Senator Portman: “I’m not suggesting Democrats aren’t going to try by reconciliation to do the big tax increases and big spending they’d like to do outside of this, I’m sure they will. But in the meantime, let’s go ahead and get this done.”

ABC News’ Trish Turner: “@POTUS told the GOP group he would try to move his non-traditional infrastructure thru reconciliation. Capito said that wouldn’t poison the well on this deal, tho. ‘I mean, why wouldn’t we work with the Pres of the United States to improve our infrastructure or make any other improvements in the country?  I mean, we know that they have that option, we used that option in 2017.’”