Go Ahead, President Trump, Shut Down the Government

Stephen Miller, President Trump’s chronically angry White House aide, assured everyone Sunday, on national TV, that the POTUS wasn’t kidding when he told Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi last week that he would be “proud” to shut down the government if they didn’t give him border wall money.

Yesterday, it seemed like Trump might have been. For the second time in less than a week, he issued the threat only to get cold feet with his press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders suggesting that he might, in fact, be willing to compromise.

This has been Trump’s pattern since he got elected. But the only way he will permanently call off this threat is if he follows through on it once, I note in a column at The Week.

Trump is of course obsessed with “winning.” And he thinks he can win by rallying his base. Only when it becomes unambiguously clear to him that a government shutdown will lose him more independents than gain him Republicans will he stop yammering about it.

Go here to read the piece.