.
Schumer says Trump needs to understand the votes for a southern border wall aren’t there in US House or Senate.
“He is not going to get the wall in any form.” https://t.co/tExauiccZy
— Jennifer Jacobs (@JenniferJJacobs) December 16, 2018
Playing Reality Star Emperor on the teevee — Who gets the thumbs down? All eyes are on ME! — is the only part of the Oval Office Occupation that Donny Dollhands actually enjoys. No surprise, he thinks of a government shutdown as a prime opportunity for more exposure*. The fact that hundreds of thousands of people are depending on getting paid for doing those jobs would only add an extra thrill for him, assuming anyone tried to get the concept across.
* (sorry for that image, first thing in the morning)
So, y’know, I really don’t have any concern to spare for the rest of the Republicans, who are facing the blowback they toiled to achieve.
Per the Washington Post, company paper for the town whose monopoly industry is national politics:
Congressional Republicans struggled Monday to find a way to persuade President Trump to back off a public threat to shut down the government over border wall money, staying largely in the dark over the impasse that could halt pay for hundreds of thousands of federal workers by the end of the week.
At the White House, Trump has remained disinclined to support even stopgap measures that would keep federal government operations running for a week or two, told by his closest advisers that he would have even less leverage when Democrats take control of the House next month. Trump is also bolstered by support of rank-and-file Border Patrol agents, whose union leader told the president in a recent Oval Office conversation that they would back a wall-induced shutdown if the dispute came to that point.
All that has left Republican lawmakers eager to avoid a shutdown unsure whether Trump would ultimately come around to at least one option that would end the impasse before Friday. Without a resolution that the president could sign before midnight Friday, roughly 800,000 federal workers will be furloughed or forced to work without pay in a partial shutdown that Trump has already — and proudly — claimed as his own…
Tuesday Morning Open Thread: Thick As A BrickPost + Comments (112)