If President Trump caves on his demand for funding to start on his on-again-off-again border wall, he might as well just go back home to New York and let his daughter run the White House for the rest of his term.
Trump last week proudly declared during an Oval Office meeting with Democratic leaders Rep. Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif, and Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., that he would own any partial government shutdown if Congress doesn’t allot him $5 billion for a border wall.
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Setting aside that we no longer have any clue what Trump means when he says “wall,” he has set himself up for a painfully easy failure. Unless he’s serious.
Schumer gave no indication that Senate Democrats, whose votes Trump needs, are interested. And the president has caved on immigration before, as when he pathetically gave in to the media lie over the summer that there was a “family separation” crisis at the border. But if there is a shutdown, and if Trump commits to it each day, reminding the public that he was elected to deal with border security and our broken immigration system, he can win.
The president’s positions on immigration are overwhelmingly popular, particularly among independents (whose votes he needs to win re-election in 2020), but he appears to have forgotten.
Some of President Trump’s supporters have deluded themselves into believing he won the Oval Office confrontation last week with Pelosi and Schumer. He didn’t.
The deadline for Congress to pass a funding bill is Dec. 21 and if he caves on getting money for his so-called “wall,” there’s no reason for Democrats, or worse, his supporters, to ever take him seriously again.
