Well no problem then. If he hasn’t changed his position there is no need for congress to approve funds, because Mexico will be paying for it.
The Trump administration is in a revolving door that won’t stop spinning. Sad…
Commander Chaos strikes again. It really is he’ll say anything to the person he is talking to wants to hear. I didn’t know we spelled inconsistency with a “J,” as in Donald “Jinconsistency” Trump.
Mixed signals:
I quit
I give up
I never cared
Squirrel!
I’m gonna blow up the world!!!
(Waits)
(Crickets)
Woiked!
So it sounds as if trump would be willing to sign a bill without the wall money, but there’s still a question of whether Ryan and McConnell can pass something for him to sign.
Just another example of the left hand not knowing what the left hand is doing. What a winner!
Will someone please put him in his padded room and lock the door.
There will be no wall. Now move along please.
Exactly. As usual, Trump is his own worst enemy. He made a ridiculous promise – that a foreign country would pay for the U.S. to build a border wall – and now finds himself tripped up by that promise.
If he was making a straight pitch for Congress to pay for the wall, then at least members of his own party might feel compelled to support the appropriation – after all, the GOP as a whole has advocated for increased border fencing/walls, and for an overall enforcement crackdown on the border, for decades now.
But since Trump promised that Mexico would pay for it, that leaves him on very shaky ground. He’s created a situation where GOP members of Congress would have to stick their necks out for him, and yet whichever way they voted, they’d be breaking his promise in one way or the other – either by not building the wall, or by having US taxpayers pay for it.
Trump to Congress: I demand that you break my promise by making taxpayers pay for my unpopular border wall, and here are the tools I’m giving you to accomplish that task – an unpopular threat to harm the health insurance system with likely disastrous results (both in terms of health outcomes for Americans, and political outcomes for the GOP), and a wildly unpopular shutdown of the government, for which the GOP is sure to be blamed. Now, go forth and win me some border wall money!
Congress to Trump: Ummmmmmmm…
Democrats won’t pay for a wall under any circumstances and republicans don’t want to be stuck with shutting down the government yet again.
Trump can go pound sand.
Where I see this going is that Congress will cut Trump out of the loop and just reach some sort of compromise and send it to his desk for a signature. Trump will claim total victory anyway and proclaim that he got everything he wanted, even if it isn’t at all what he said he wanted.
To counter this, the Ds have to loudly proclaim in advance that Trump lost and lost huge, even if that causes the deal to collapse. See, the Ds only win and Trump only loses if Trump can’t claim victory somehow. And Trump MUST be seen as a loser or the country loses for having put him in a position to be seen as a success. Plus, the more desperate and weak Trump appears, the desperate and weak he gets.
As Josh noted in another article: “This does fit the pattern with the earlier Obamacare repeal debacle – aggressive stance, bluster, confidence followed by abject surrender.”
Perhaps we could label this as The Trump Cycle of Failed Negotiations. It could be studied as part of a broader model of what not to do in governance.
Teh Donlad needs a copy of
“The President’s Relationship with Congress for Dummies”
We spent the entire campaign process waiting for the pivot. Apparently we just had to [barf] get him in office and he’s whirling like a Dervish.
Latin American countries, including Mexico, continue to cultivate other stable export markets. And China continues to step in where the US threatens to turn away.
From Monday’s FT:
Tiny little left hand.
Followed by “The Idiot’s Guide to Personal Ingetgrity,” the “KISS (Keep It Simple Stupid) Guide to Effective Public Speaking,” and last but not least:
NK briefing this afternoon at WH --The whole Senate to attend. House also gathering.