And as usual, he sucked at it. Just check all of the immediate responses from key Democrats that Anne Laurie at Balloon Juice put together.
Adam L Silverman at Balloon Juice has a more detailed response of his own:
The President’s pitch this afternoon was a combination of rehashing his Oval Office address from two weeks ago with some limited sweeteners in exchange for $5.7 billion for his wall in order to try to bring the Democrats to the table and reopen the parts of the government that are in shutdown. This includes a temporary, three year DACA extension; a temporary, three year reinstatement of the Temporary Protected Status Program; and slight adjustments to the President’s hard line attempts to rewrite US law and treaty obligations in regards to those seeking asylum...
The proposal was dead on arrival with the Democrats because the Democrats, under the leadership of Speaker Pelosi, seem to have finally learned that once you pay protection the first time, you never get out from under the thumb of the people running the protection racket...
Just one word there: Danegeld.
Back to Silverman:
The President’s proposal is also dead on arrival because his outside advisors and supporters feel betrayed by what he is proposing... Ann Coulter has already lambasted it... Rush Limbaugh hasn’t weighed in yet, at least not that I’ve seen, nor has Hannity or Tucker. Ingraham sort of has on her twitter feed. My guess is they’re all waiting to see how this plays so they can figure out whether they need to slam the President to get him back into line or support him against the Democrats. Coulter really only wants full on white Christian herrenvolkism, so slamming the President on this right away is easy. Regardless, this isn’t playing well with his base and I’m sure that Stephen Miller, who both channels that base to the President and is in contact with the interest entrepreneurs who manipulate it, will do what he does best behind the scenes and by the time Senator McConnell can bring this to a vote, the President will have changed his mind again and walked away from the sweeteners.
The President cannot be negotiated with because he is not a reliable negotiator, changes his mind constantly, and lies constantly. Senator McConnell cannot be negotiated with because he is not a reliable negotiator and because he recognizes no rule, norm, tradition, and/or law unless it can be manipulated to benefit him. It is easy for the Democrats to reject this proposal. If they agree to anything before Senator McConnell brings the clean appropriations and continuing resolutions to the floor that the Senate under his leadership passed 100-0 during the lame duck session in December 2018 and the President agrees to sign it before negotiations over immigration and border security start, then they have surrendered on every legislative and policy dispute for as long as the President is in office and Senator McConnell is the leader of his caucus...
We are in a sticky situation where the Democrats can't negotiate in good faith because the people running the Republicans refuse to negotiate in good faith. It's not healthy for our nation, but that's the circumstances we're in now.
I said before, this #trumpShutdown is going to end with a third option, one where the federal government itself collapses either with too many agencies and services closing down (hurting millions) or with the federal workforce rising up in ways they normally can't - just found out last week federal employees can't strike, but there are so many public signs of stress that a mass strike is unavoidable at this point - and compels trump to re-open government. But that third option will break the norms of governance as well, and it won't end cleanly...
There is of course a fourth option: Mueller finishes his grand juries into Russia-trump activities and he arrests every key Republican - trump included - on the Putin Payroll (tm). But there's no guarantee of that, and DAMMIT MUELLER WE'RE WAITING WE'VE BEEN WAITING YOU'RE WORSE THAN GEORGE RR MARTIN AT THIS POINT ARRRRRRGGGHHHH.
Ahem.
To make a more relevant cultural reference, we keep harking back to The Godfather movies to highlight the ineptitude, greed, and overall gangster behavior of trump and his Inner Circle of handlers (AKA his kids). There has been the constant references to the lot of them being an Army of Fredos, but here I'm thinking of the scene where corrupt Senator Geary tries to extort Michael:
Except that trump is not Michael here. trump is the corrupt sonofabitch Geary. trump is trying to squeeze the Democrats here, trying to squeeze them to get every penny he can, all out of spite and racist demagoguery even as he ignores his own sinful hypocrisy.
No, the Democrats are playing Michael here, and the offer is this trump: Nothing.
And you're the one who's going to be paying...
2 comments:
The senate Republicans are probably praying for the TSA to go on strike, which might or might not break the impasse, but would definitely harm the actual TSA workers.
But they don't care. They're getting clobbered in the media, and Fergus is dragging them down into his puddle of stupid, and each new horror story from the shutdown is a campaign ad against them.
They should have thought about this beforehand, and it's not like we didn't try to tell them.
-Doug in Oakland
trump has been describing the shutdown as a "strike" for the past few weeks, possibly out of inability to accept "shutdown" as a term because it puts the burden on himself for causing it. But I dread he and the rest of the GOP want to MAKE IT a strike in order to justify trump calling on "Emergency Powers" to end such a strike, force the workers back to no pay, and use it to commit other unconstitutional and unethical acts.
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