government-shutdown

What Trump Could Learn From His Shutdown

How did we get into this sorry situation? A meltdown of this magnitude typically has many causes. In this case, the president’s inability to reach some sort of deal rests heavily on several basic failures of understanding by him and his team. These include:

1. A failure to grasp how divided government works. The president somehow came to believe that he’d have more leverage once the Democrats took control of the House. Maybe someone convinced him that, after the transfer of power, he could shift blame for the impasse onto Speaker Nancy Pelosi — a favorite villain of Republicans. Or maybe he assumed that Pelosi & Company would fold in the face of the dysfunction and public outcry a shutdown would bring. Whatever the logic, Team Trump assumed Democrats would become more pliable, and a deal would emerge.

Unfortunately, Mr. Trump has been spoiled by two years of Congress being led by weak-kneed members of his party who, even when troubled by his excesses, largely let him run amok, lest he call down upon them the wrath of the Republican base.

But for their part, Ms. Pelosi and her new majority are concerned about presenting a united front against Mr. Trump’s challenges to constitutional authority. With the president’s wall having become a flash point, the political costs to Democrats for cutting a deal seen as advantageous to Mr. Trump would be steep.

2. A failure to understand the costs of playing only to the base. While Republican lawmakers may be awed by Mr. Trump’s command of their party’s troops, Democrats are more motivated by the fact that the bulk of the electorate is tired of the president’s divisive demagogy. Time and again, Mr. Trump has chosen partisanship over leadership, doing nothing to expand his appeal. This puts him at a disadvantage in wooing the public to his side of the wall debate.

3. A failure to understand Nancy Pelosi. Apparently, Mr. Trump never got around to reading “The Art of War,” or at least not Sun Tzu’s admonition to “know your enemy.” If he had, the president would have tried to develop at least a basic working relationship with Ms. Pelosi. The White House clearly assumed that, at some point — maybe after she secured the speaker’s gavel — Ms. Pelosi would bend to Mr. Trump’s will. But the speaker is not impressed with bluster. She is seldom cowed by political pressure from her own team, much less the opposing one. She plays the long game, and her will is as formidable as Mr. Trump’s, possibly more so. One key difference: Ms. Pelosi knows how the legislative process works.

4. A failure to understand shutdown politics. If you don’t want to be blamed for one, don’t say you’re going to own it. Mr. Trump sacrificed that option when he boasted how “proud” he’d be to grind the government to a halt.

5. A failure to understand how the government works. Neither Mr. Trump nor anyone on his team had a clue how disruptive even a partial shutdown could be — and how they’d need to scurry to prevent millions of people from losing food stamps, housing or tax refunds.

6. A failure to understand how members of Congress operate. Standing by the president when he’s tweeting out empty threats and insults is one thing. But when a shutdown starts causing pain and outrage back home, Republican lawmakers, especially those in vulnerable districts or states, start asking themselves which they value more — their president or their political hides. Even casual students of Congress know that this is not a tough call.

Bottom line: Mr. Trump loves to boast that he leads with his “gut.” He really can’t be bothered with all the humdrum details of governing, remaining proudly ignorant of how anything works in Washington — the presidency, the Congress, the Constitution. That’s left him in a standoff for which he was wholly unprepared.

For the sake of the millions being hurt, let’s hope he manages to blunder himself back out of this mess soon.

Fox News fact-checks Sarah Huckabee Sanders to her face

BREAKING: Fox News’ Chris Wallace just fact-checked Sarah Huckabee Sanders live on air over her lie that 4,000 terrorists were stopped at the southern border. You know it’s bad when you’ve lost Fox News…

Trump’s Wall, Trump’s Shutdown and Trump’s Side of the Story

WASHINGTON — At first, he vowed to “take the mantle” for closing part of the federal government. Then he blamed Democrats, saying they “now own the shutdown.” By Friday, President Trump was back to owning it again. “I’m very proud of doing what I’m doing,” he declared.

Two weeks into the showdown over a border wall, Mr. Trump is now crafting his own narrative of the confrontation that has come to consume his presidency. Rather than a failure of negotiation, the shutdown has become a test of political virility, one in which he insists he is receiving surreptitious support from unlikely quarters.

Not only are

national security hawks cheering him on to defend a porous southern border, but so too are

former presidents who he says have secretly confessed to him that they should have done what he is doing. Not only do

federal employees accept being furloughed or forced to work without wages,

they have assured him that they would give up paychecks so that he can stand strong.

Never mind how implausible such assertions might seem. The details do not matter to Mr. Trump as much as dominating the debate. After an oddly quiescent holiday season in which he complained via Twitter about being left at home alone — “poor me” — he has taken the public stage this week clearly intent on framing the conflict on his own terms.

People close to the president described him as emboldened since members of Congress returned to Washington after the break, giving him not only a clear target to swing at but helping him focus on a fight that he is convinced is a political winner. One aide said Mr. Trump believes he has gained the upper hand in the public battle.

Although surveys at first showed more Americans blaming him for the shutdown than Democrats, later polling showed the fault more evenly split. And the voters he cares most about, his core conservative supporters, are more enthusiastic than the public at large. He has told people that “my people” love the fight, and that he believes he is winning.

In the past three days, Mr. Trump has appeared in public three times to get his version of the story out while Democrats celebrated their takeover of the House. At a lengthy cabinet meeting on Wednesday, an appearance with border patrol union leaders on Thursday and a news conference with Republican congressional leaders in the Rose Garden on Friday, he engaged in quintessentially Trumpian stream of conscious discussions that ranged widely and unpredictably.

At one point, he argued that the Soviet Union was right to invade Afghanistan in 1979 to stop terrorists, a revisionist version that provoked a strong reaction in Kabul and earned a sharp rebuke from the often supportive editorial page of The Wall Street Journal, which said, “We cannot recall a more absurd misstatement of history by an American President.”

At another point, Mr. Trump mocked India for doing no more in Afghanistan than building a library, which generated headlines in New Delhi about the “jab” at its prime minister, not to mention more head scratching because, according to Indian news media, the country has not built a library in Afghanistan in many years.

He repeatedly claimed that the new trade agreement he has negotiated with Mexico and Canada means that Mexico really is paying for the wall, even though the pact has yet to be approved by Congress and has no direct connection to border security. He has made misleading claims about how many terrorists might be coming across the border.

Mr. Trump’s version of events differed even from the other people in the room at Friday’s meeting at the White House. When Democratic congressional leaders emerged after two hours, they described a “contentious” session with no meaningful progress as the president threatened to keep the government closed for “months or even years.” When Mr. Trump emerged shortly afterward, he described a “very, very productive meeting” and predicted the standoff could be “fixed very quickly.”

Two people briefed on the meeting said that White House officials viewed the conversation as the first civil discussion that had taken place between the two sides, and it left some of Mr. Trump’s aides hopeful. Indeed, Mr. Trump made a point of publicly saying nothing but relatively positive things about the Democrats on Friday.

Optimistic that a deal really is within reach, the president said he would have Vice President Mike Pence; Kirstjen Nielsen, the homeland security secretary; and Jared Kushner, his son-in-law and senior adviser, meet with Democrats over the weekend.

But there were questions about his own side of the aisle. Senator Mitch McConnell, Republican of Kentucky and the majority leader, unlike other congressional Republican leaders, was not present for the Rose Garden news conference. “He’s running the Senate,” Mr. Trump explained, even though the Senate had adjourned hours earlier and Mr. McConnell’s spokesman said the senator did not know about the news conference.

The president nonetheless was feeling energized by support he said he had received for the fight — including the very federal employees who are not being paid as a result of the partial shutdown.

“A lot of people that you think are upset — and certainly they’re not thrilled — but they say, ‘Sir, do the right thing, we need border security,’” Mr. Trump said. “And these are people that won’t be getting paid.”

As for his predecessors, he said, “This should have been done by all of the presidents that preceded me, and they all know it. Some of them have told me that we should have done it.”

By all public accounts, Mr. Trump had not spoken with his living predecessors since his inauguration until former President George Bush died last month. Mr. Trump called Mr. Bush’s son, former President George W. Bush, to offer condolences, but the subject of the wall did not come up, according to Mr. Bush’s office. A few days later, at the elder Mr. Bush’s funeral, Mr. Trump encountered his predecessors for the first time since taking office, but he sat quietly without talking with them during the service.

The younger Mr. Bush built miles of wall and fencing along the Mexico line while he was president, but said it could not cover the entire border and insisted that enforcement should be coupled with an overhaul of immigration law to permit many people in the country illegally to stay. Former President Barack Obama has repeatedly criticized Mr. Trump’s proposed wall, and former President Jimmy Carter has said technological improvements would be more effective at protecting the border.

The White House did not say afterward which presidents Mr. Trump was referring to, but a senior administration official said he was probably referring to public comments his predecessors have made about the need for border security, not necessarily for a wall specifically.

As he careened this week from subject to subject and assertion to assertion, an energized Mr. Trump seemed to be enjoying himself. He went on for more than an hour and a half on Wednesday and another hour on Friday.

“Should we keep this going or not, folks?” he asked reporters at one point before noticing that it was a cold January day in the Rose Garden.

“Should we keep this going a little bit longer?” he asked again. “Let me know when you get tired.”

One thing Mr. Trump was not was tired.

The Border Wall: What Has Trump Built So Far?

The federal shutdown hinges on whether the United States should fund a large wall on its border with Mexico. While Trump has described the wall’s progress, not a single mile of an extended wall has been built so far.

.. The U.S.-Mexico border is 1,954 miles long…

.. President Trump has said he wants a 1,000-mile wall made of concrete or steel. He commissioned eight prototypes.

.. No border walls based on these prototypes have been built or funded by Congress.

.. Before Mr. Trump, there were 654 miles of a variety of barriers.

.. Since he took office, no new miles of barriers have been built. Some existing barriers have been replaced.

.. Congress has approved 124 miles of new and replacement barriers, using designs already in place, according to the Department of Homeland Security.

.. The Congressional bill that funded recent wall construction states that only existing designs, such as the slat-style barrier, can be used. That means no money has been allotted for any construction based on Mr. Trump’s prototypes of the new wall.