‘Snakes are fast’

Donald Trump is obsessed with aesthetics. From hosting beauty pageants where he allegedly hustled himself into dressing rooms while contestants were naked (he denies this), to decking out his New York apartment like a dictator’s palace to wearing his tie so long that it hangs down past his crotch, the president is all about appearances.

It makes sense, then, that Trump would characterize the Senate’s passing of his self-described “big, beautiful bill” – which is predicted to add $3.3tn to the national deficit, strip millions of people of their health insurance and extend tax cuts that mostly benefit the wealthy – in pretty visual terms.

Should the House now pass the bill, the US would be, Trump announced, the “HOTTEST NATION IN THE WORLD!”

It’s not quite there yet. The bill only squeaked through in the Senate when JD Vance, the vice-president, cast a tie-breaking vote after the defection of three Republicans. Rand Paul said he voted no because the bill didn’t cut enough, the senator apparently more interested in finances than the fact that rural hospitals will be hit hard in his home state of Kentucky and elsewhere. Susan Collins and Thom Thillis voted no because they said it removes too many people from Medicaid benefits. Trump, furious, threatened to ruin Thillis’s political career – only for the North Carolina senator to announce he’s retiring anyway. Meanwhile, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, whose vote could have quashed the bill, eventually said yes after the bill was crammed with benefits for her state, including tax deductions for Alaskan whaling captains.

Representatives in the House now get their turn, with a vote on the bill expected any time now – but as the Guardian’s Lauren Gambino and Chris Stein reported, the future of the legislation “hangs in the balance, as House speaker Mike Johnson seeks to quell an internal revolt over the changes made by the Senate”.

Just like in the Senate, Republicans in the House can only afford three no votes if the bill is to pass, which is not many votes. The bill is at risk, Lauren and Chris wrote, of losing decisive votes from several sides: “From rightwing fiscal hardliners demanding steep spending cuts, moderates wary of dismantling safety-net programs and Republicans from Democratic-led states expected to make a stand on a contentious tax provision.”

Trump, who spent Wednesday morning cheerily hinting that he might deport New York City’s Democratic candidate for mayor, has set a deadline of this coming Friday 4 July for Congress to pass the bill, but it seems clear this could be a long process.

Senators grafted through the night on Tuesday (sort of – CNN reported that two Republican senators took it in turns to huddle under a “large, fuzzy blanket”, while another spent the evening reading his Kindle) to pass the bill, and the House could end up doing the same.

Not Trump, though. He spent Tuesday on a little trip to Florida, to visit “Alligator Alcatraz”.

The new migrant detention jail – “a tented camp on mosquito-infested land 50 miles west of Miami”, as my colleague Richard Luscombe wrote – has been criticized for subjecting its future inmates to cruel and demeaning treatment, as well as busting up the fragile environment of the Florida wetlands.

Trump disagrees.

“It might be as good as the real Alcatraz,” Trump cooed after touring the facility. “A little controversial, but I couldn’t care less.”

Praise indeed from a man who is attempting to reopen the original Alcatraz, the California island prison that Clint Eastwood famously escaped in 1979.

Trump had earlier offered some ghoulish, oddly specific advice to people who may attempt to escape his tent prison, which is located in a reptile-heavy area.

Asked by a reporter if “the idea” is that if someone escapes from the tents, “they get eaten by an alligator or a snake”, the president of the United States replied:

“I guess that’s the concept. This is not a nice business. I guess that’s the concept. If you… you know… the snakes are fast.

“But alligators… We’re going to teach them how to run away from an alligator. Don’t run in a straight line, look, like this [at this point Trump made a zigzag motion with his hands], and you know what? Your chances go up about 1%. Not a good thing.”

Trump’s remarks were quickly shared on social media by the White House, along with videos of the president touring the literal cages where up to 5,000 people could eventually be detained.

So things are a bit grim all round, really. Perhaps it’s time to run for the hills, in a manner in which our chances go up. Not in a straight line, you understand, but like this, in a zigzag motion. Maybe that’ll do it.