“The vice chairman of the Massachusetts Republican State Committee is battling COVID-19 after attending what he described as a largely maskless holiday party at the White House earlier this month,” the Boston Globe reports.

Said Tom Mountain: “I didn’t listen to the warnings of my own family, and now I’m paying the price.”

He told WJAR: “Lets put it this way: When I went down to Washington, D.C., for the White House Hanukkah event, I was perfectly fine. And three days later after that event, I was in the hospital… ready to be put on a lifesaving ventilator.”

Washington Post: “With other key Republicans waylaid, it fell to Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.) to talk the president down. So Graham raced to Trump’s Florida golf club and worked the problem: What possible solution could assuage Trump without forcing Congress to reopen negotiations? ‘We’d hit a shot, take a phone call. Hit a shot, take a phone call. Hit a shot, talk about what’s a good deal,’ Graham said in an interview Monday. ‘It was a very intense Christmas Day.’”

“Graham was far from alone. Republicans across Washington had blanched at Trump’s shocking threat to kill the coronavirus relief package — especially with the Georgia runoffs and the Senate majority hanging in the balance.”

New York Times: “As an exercise in raw presidential power, it was a flop. As a political tactic, it backfired. And as a coda to his final weeks in office, President Trump’s threat to veto a $900 billion Covid relief and government funding bill merely underscored his tumultuous tenure in the Oval Office.”