Both Democrats and Republicans gleefully lit into President Trump on Friday after he announced his plan to pass a three-week stopgap to reopen the government for three weeks – a bill that critics said sounded suspiciously similar to a proposal from Senate Democrats, which was voted down on Thursday. Anne Coulter accused Trump of outdoing George HW Bush as the “biggest wimp ever” and the NY Daily News ran an editorial entitled “The Art Of The Cave”.
In response, Trump reminded the world in a tweet that “21 days isn’t a long time…” and that he still has a Trump card – calling a national emergency to bypass Congress and build the wall with money earmarked for disaster relief.
21 days goes very quickly. Negotiations with Democrats will start immediately. Will not be easy to make a deal, both parties very dug in. The case for National Security has been greatly enhanced by what has been happening at the Border & through dialogue. We will build the Wall!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 26, 2019
As Trump has repeatedly insisted, the battle over the border wall isn’t over. And to try and drive that point home, the White House dispatched one of its top surrogates, Acting Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney, to make the rounds once again on the Sunday shows to warn Democrats that Trump is absolutely prepared to shut down the government again in three weeks if he doesn’t get his wall funding.
During an interview with Fox News Sunday, Mulvaney said that while it would be better to get the money approved by Congress, Trump is committed to defending the nation “with or without” Congress.
“It’s still better to get it through legislation,” Mulvaney said. “At the end of the day, the president’s commitment is to defend the nation and he’ll do it either with or without Congress,” he added.
Ultimately, Trump will be judged not by how the process unfolds, but by what happens at the end – that is, whether he succeeds in winning funding for a border barrier, or not. And while nobody likes a government shutdown, sometimes, when the president veots a funding bill, that’s just what happens.
“No one wants a government shutdown,” Mulvaney said. “But when a president vetoes a bill that’s put in front of him on a spending package, sometimes that has the effect of shutting the government down. We don’t go into this trying to shut the government down.”
Mulvaney also stopped by CBS’s Face the Nation, where he insisted that Trump “actually is” ready to shut down the government again in three weeks.
.@margbrennan: “Is the president really prepared to shut down the govt again in 3 weeks?”@MickMulvaneyOMB: “Uh, yeah. I think he actually is. Keep in mind he’s willing to do whatever it takes to secure the border.” pic.twitter.com/XndvphkzHG
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) January 27, 2019
Pressed about what this would accomplish, Mulvaney said that despite Pelosi and Schumer’s insistence that a wall would be a “moral outrage”, in private, some rank and file Democrats have been approaching the Trump administration to tell them that they think a barrier at the border would be a good idea – but that they were unwilling to negotiate during a shutdown.
CBS: “Why does POTUS think outcome will be different in 21 days? Dems remained largely unified”
MULVANEY: “B/c so many of them came to us & said, ‘you know, we think you might be right on this barrier thing, but we can’t negotiate w/you during a shutdown’… now’s their chance.” pic.twitter.com/9spdPBMb4v
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) January 27, 2019
Of course, the fact that Democrats think the wall is a good idea shouldn’t be news to anybody: We’ve pointed out the Democrats’ border wall hypocrisy many times.
via ZeroHedge News http://bit.ly/2SeeEXu Tyler Durden