The shutdown battle delayed congressional investigations for weeks. So why wouldn’t Trump want to do it again?
On Friday, Donald Trump finally caved on his 35-day shutdown, agreeing to reopen the government without getting a single dollar of the funding for a border wall that he had insisted was such an emergency it was worth wrecking the economy to get it. The president’s capitulation was rightly greeted as a major triumph for House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who kept the newly elected Democratic majority united in opposition to Trump’s demands and finally broke his will.
And while there will ostensibly be a debate over border security, even Trump seems to grasp that Congress is about as likely to give him wall funding as Stormy Daniels is likely to offer to become his fourth wife. That’s why there was a shutdown — which began, let us remember, when Republicans controlled both houses of Congress — in the first place: The wall is a bad idea, and neither party really wants to expend any effort to make it happen.
But despite being handed such a massive humiliation, Trump so far seems unable to do the smart thing and slink away in shame, pretending this never happened. Instead, he spent the weekend demagoguing on Twitter about the wall, trying to make the inane slogan « build the wall and crime will fall » happen. Worse yet, the administration signaled that Trump isn’t done with blackmail strategies.
« 21 days goes very quickly, » Trump tweeted threateningly on Saturday morning. « Will not be easy to make a deal, both parties very dug in. »
In an interview with the Wall Street Journal on Sunday, Trump declared that shutting down the government again in three weeks, when the continuing resolution runs out, is « certainly an option ». He also has been pushing the idea, as has his acting chief of staff, Mick Mulvaney, that the White House is still considering declaring a national emergency as a strong-arm tactic.
Trump is a braggart who likes to talk tough and make big promises (and threats) without following through. But there is unfortunately good reason to worry that he may well follow through on these particular threats. The border wall fight is almost certainly a losing one, but this increasingly desperate president sees it as a lifeline.
