Get ready for a long drawn out battle as America and the world witnesses the last stand of the self declared greatest general of all time - General Donald Trump. The maven who is also the finest deal maker in all history has allowed his fantasy of a wall to escalate into a government shutdown while he is threatening to declare a national emergency if he doesn’t get his way. How he imagines that any or all of this is going to change the reality of the mess he is in is unclear. If anything his actions will accelerate his demise.
So every sign points to Trump coming to the end of his lollipop - put another way he is losing it and throwing off whatever few cautions he previosly exhibited. He has every good reason for digging in for his last stand - Mueller’s report is supposedly coming out in two to three months which his TV lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, has confided is going to be “horrific” and “collusion” is obvious to all but the diminishing faithful. His Congressional cover evaporated in the midterms so a Mueller report could be subpoenaed if the latter is fired. Added to the methodical dismantling of the Trump criminal world by the Special Counsel, his whole sordid financial history and association with Russia is about to be surgically exposed by Nancy’s Chairpersons of the House’s oversight committees.
It is worthwhile recalling that Trump had agreed to bipartisan motions to fund the government without money for his wall when his new unelected branch of government, Fox and Trump’s other friends, vetoed Congress’s decision thereby triggering Trump’s last stand.
THE NEW BRANCH OF GOVERNMENT - FOX NEWS AND FRIENDS LIKE RUSH
The Donald’s alter egos, Rush Limbaugh, Laura Ingraham and Sean Hannity among others have decided that the issue on which the POTUS should fall on his sword is the “great great beautiful” wall that Trump promised that Mexico was going to pay for. The Fox and other friends intervention resulted in Trump backtracking on deals he made with the Republican Senate to finance the government. In so doing Trump created a disastrous bohaai by shutting down the government which has now become the issue with nearly a million Federal Workers without a paycheck. He now has several other self inflicted fires to put out. He argues for example that the Federal Workers agree with his decision and are only to happy to take “one for the team”. The fact that seventy - eight percent of them live from pay check to paycheck and that they are not confirming his streams of consciousness in the media does not fuzz the POTUS, he just carries on.
A question that has yet not been asked is, “What is the end game of Limbaugh et al other than pushing up their own ratings?” In other words if Trump can or cannot get his wall what is their follow up advice to him? As Trump only thinks and acts in the moment this dilemma does not bother him. Trump believes his fake news crew are more important to him than the Congressional Republicans because he thinks his base will desert him if Rush and company criticize him. Donald should think for a moment, if that is possible, who will they support if not him? They are a collection of unelected nonentities whose importance has exponentially increased because they have the ear of the President. Their significance has magnified beyond the imagination now that they are the only constituency that actually can instruct the world’s most powerful leader on how should act.
As the noose becomes tighter and tighter Trump’s only solution appears to be to declare a national emergency and second the money for the wall, from the department of defense. This would show the base he was delivering on his beautiful wall come hell or high water and Limbaugh et al would shout rah rah rah. The problem with that move was everything thing that the Republican Party stood for was against this Executive grab for power. They crucified Obama for far less. Even more significantly several of the Republican legislators have let the world know their discomfort. Trump’s actions is exacerbating their peeling off of support. Already eight Republicans in the House and six in the Senate have registered their opposition in one form or another.
If the POTUS has forgotten, Mitch McConnell shouldn’t have, the late John McCain’s dramatic lambasting of the President when he criticized Trump’s “half baked spurious nationalism cooked up by people who would rather find scapegoats than solve problems.”
TRUMP’S NEW LEGAL FIRM
Digging in for the endgame the WhiteHouse has hired seventeen new lawyers in preparation for the legal battles that the President is going to face. The WhiteHouse Counsel Pat Cipollone has now increased his team to thirty - five counsellors with a goal of forty. The urgency is due to preparation of arguments that no documents or testimony that could damage Trump should see the light of day because of “executive privilege”.
Added to the lawyers’ problems is that they would have to fight a possible subpoena the President might face in the light of his TV lawyer’s statement that they would no longer cooperate with Mueller, even to answer any more questions. Rudy Giuliani has threatened that Trump would go to the ends of the earth not to cooperate with Mueller. This will be a tall order bearing in mind the Supreme Court precedents forcing Nixon to deliver his tapes and Clinton to be deposed in a civil case. Even Ronald Reagan had to bow to the inevitable that the President was not above the law in the investigation of the Iran/Contra scandal.
Cipollone’s small sized legal firm will also have to argue that the army of Trump’s current and former administration members need not appear before Congress because of executive privilege. Bearing in mind Trump’s legal jeopardy, he is facing seventeen separate legal challenges two of which he has all but been labelled an unindicted co conspirator, perhaps Cipollone has underestimated the legal manpower he needs in this humongous task. Why stop at forty lawyers - the taxpayer is footing the bill?
TRUMP ADDRESSES THE NATION, VISITS THE BORDER AND DISHES OUT ADVICE AS TO HOW TO SURVIVE WITH NO PAY
Following his advisors’, (guess who), prompting, he went against his gut in holding a lackluster Oval Office address to the nation. Trump who has bragged, as often as he has promised that the Mexicans would pay for ‘that beautiful wall”, that he is a “ratings machine” was beaten on his big night by Nancy and Chuck. The no nonsense Democratic duo hardly set the world on fire with their response to Trump’s argument that there was a national emergency at the border. Never the less more viewers watched the mundane Democratic pair than the much vaunted TV star.
Trump also followed up his pathetic TV performance with a tour of the Southern Border which, as Trump predicted, would not move the needle one jot. He spent most of his time repeating that he never said that Mexico would have to pay for the wall and blaming the Democrats for the impasse. He had to have noted that half the armed forces that he sent to the border as an election stunt had returned to base in San Antonio. Unbelievably the day ended with him siting down for an interview with a leader of his kitchen cabinet, Fox News’s, Sean Hannity. Maybe Hannity should have questioned him on the logistical problems of building a wall in the Rio Grande and where he was going to get the money to pay for the eminent domain. Instead the Fox echo chamber reinforced the fact that they were dealing with a national crisis.
As more and more Republican legislators registered their discomfort at the ongoing closure of the government and the impact it was having on close on a million unpaid Federal employees, Trump registered his total lack of empathy at their plight. The Trump administration was issuing inane, insulting and ludicrous advice to those who had to meet their financial commitments such as they should hold garage sales, babysit, dog walk and turn their hobbies into money… Nancy Pelosi had the final word on the insensitive Trump’s advice when she said that those afflicted did not have fathers to give them money to bail them out. Every Republican Congressperson had to be receiving reports from their constituencies that their local nightly news was featuring the impact of the financial crisis that Trump had precipitated. Craigs list reported a rash of items that the victims of Trump’s delusions were urgently putting up for sale.
THE ERSATZ CRISIS AND THE MEXICANS WILL PAY FOR THE WALL
One of the problems that Trump was facing was that there was no real crisis on the Southern border. The number of arrests was down dramatically as there were lowest number of illegal crossings in forty - six years. There were more Mexicans leaving America than coming in - presumably those exiting included a share of the rapists, drug dealers, murderers, and “some good people”. One thing about Trump is that he never learns. He forgets a few short months ago, that as an election stunt, ostensibly in order to stop an invasion he sent troops over Xmas to guard the border and stem the tide.The crisis apparently abated after the midterms only to be resuscitated as a result of Limbaugh et al negating bipartisan Congress resolutions to fund the government.
Trump admits that there is a humanitarian crisis on the Southern boundary but omits that it is of his making. He also fails to explain how building a wall will alleviate it.
To add to the tissue of lies surrounding this crisis Trump now denies that he promised that Mexico would pay for the wall. The Washington Post on January 10 produced a litany of the statements Trump had made where he claimed that he would get Mexico to pay for the wall. This included a memorandum that they could cough up in the form of a five orten billion dollar check. He now claims:
“When during the campaign, I would say Mexico would pay for it, obviously I never said this and I never meant they were going to write a check. I said they are going to pay for it and they are. They are paying for it with the incredible deal we made, called the United States, Canada, Mexico and Canada - USMCA- deal.”
Another lexicon of fabrications - First of all as he admits he did say that Mexico would pay for the wall in the same sentence as denying that he said it. Secondly they cannot be paying for it via USMACA as the deal hasn’t been ratified by Congress. Thirdly the USMCA deal is substantially the same as NAFTA which Clinton negotiated and no money accrues to the State from it. Finally Mexico have stated again and again that they will not pay for whatever Trump maintains the wall now is. The transcript of Trump begging the Mexican President not to publicly state his denial because it would embarrass him is ignored by the mendacious President.
HAS THE TRUMP DIVERSION SECURED HIS BASE?
From the get go there has been leakage from his forty percent solid approval rating. In three reliable polls the percentage of respondents that blamed Trump for the shutdown increased four percent from December 25 to January 8. The December polls indicated that 46%, 47% and 43% laid the onus on the President for the impasse. The January polls conducted by the same three organizations, Your Gov, Reuters and Morning Consult produced the following increased participants’ disapproval; 50%, 51% and 47%.
To emphasize the validity that these figures represent a base loss, blame apportioned to the Democrats decreased over the same period by three percent. The percentage of those polled blaming the Democrats has hovered in the low thirty percentage points range throughout the December and January assessments. If Trump’s base had held in the six surveys one would have expected that forty percent of the electorate would have blamed the Democrats
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This has to be cause for concern for Trump whose only way out of the escalating negative press, that will be heaped on him when the sagas of the unpaid workers start dominating the media, is to declare a national emergency. It is obvious that blaming the Democrats for the shutdown is not working.
NATIONAL EMERGENCY
The exit from this self inflicted embarrassment is to create more chaos by declaring a national emergency which of course will be contested in the courts. Trump should move very quickly to pay the employees lest there be an injunction against this action. The sieve that is the WhiteHouse has already leaked the preparations Trump is making to seize moneys for his wall. Unspent moneys in the Army Corps of Engineers has been earmarked. There is $13. 9 million that had been budgeted for victims of natural disasters such as hurricane and fire damage that Trump can commandeer. In effect he will be “stealing” money allocated to victims of natural disasters for his boondoggle wall.
Trump will then have to convince the courts that what transpired at the border was indeed a National Emergency. Those objecting, by definition, will have a high bar to reach in having Trump’s decision reversed as he ostensibly is entrusted as President in making these calls. However precedent will favor the Democratic plaintiffs.
AT THE END OF THE DAY
All the evidence points to the failure of Trump to consolidate his base with the escalating chaos that his decision to close the government has caused. The reason for his cataclysmic move being that the Democrats wouldn’t fund his wall is being met with the skepticism that it deserves.
It bears reminding that the Republicans when they controlled all the arms of government did not rate the great great beautiful wall a priority and did not attempt to fund it. So McConnell’s argument for claiming that this issue is only between the President and the Democrats is pretty rich. McConnell could end this crisis immediately by bringing Pelosi’s motions opening the government to the Senate floor. Hopefully he will be on the receiving end of an unexpected challenge in the normally safe Republican State of Kentucky. He will have earned the ire of the electorate.
The national emergency solution that this misadventure is heading for will only worsen Trump’s precarious situation.
Most significantly none of this will halt the Mueller and Democratic investigations into the Trump Criminal Enterprise.
Maybe Trump should dump his new team of advisors from Fox and their friends.
Maybe Trump should dump his new team of advisors from Fox and their friends.
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