Trump asks if it will succeed in ruining everything
Ok this is really scary – this is coup-material.
White House seeks list of programs that would be hurt if shutdown lasts into March.
White House acting chief of staff Mick Mulvaney has pressed agency leaders to provide him with a list of the highest-impact programs that will be jeopardized if the shutdown continues into March and April, people familiar with the directive said.
Mulvaney wants the list no later than Friday, these people said, and it’s the firmest evidence to date that the White House is preparing for a lengthy funding lapse that could have snowballing consequences for the economy and government services.
Putin must be breaking out the very best champagne at this news – his little buddy is going to destroy the US altogether!
I have maintained a view along those lines ever since this shutdown began.
It seems to me that Trump himself has had only a hazy idea at best of where his politics was leading him, and of the corner he has now painted himself well and truly into. It is now a race between impeachment and a coup.
Where that leaves Congress and the Senate I leave to others to work out. But I happily live on a diametrically opposite point on the globe; which is not a bad place to be right now.
I think there’s a giant implicit assumption there that “the White House” is, as it historically was, a relatively cohesive entity that can be reasoned about as a whole, where most people within it are all on the same page (or at least on the same chapter) and pulling in mostly the same direction. And I don’t think that’s the case today.
With that in mind, it’s entirely possible that one faction within the White House wants this list so they can point out to Fuckface von Clownstick exactly how much harm his pissing contest will do to the country if he lets it continue, and how much harm that will do to his popularity if he doesn’t back the fuck down.
I live in hope…
Karellen, that is one of the things I thought about. It also seems to me that the very request – tell us how much people will hurt if we don’t let up on this – might be a way of putting pressure on the Dems to cave, by pointing out that the president is willing to keep the government shut down indefinitely, and to remind them of how many people will be hurt. Knowing that Democrats are less monstrous about things, they hope the Dems will give up and give them what they want.
Mind you, I don’t think Trump is doing that; I think he has very little sense of anything outside the here and now, so thinking into March or April is beyond him. I also think the request of who would suffer is something so beyond his capacity, since he has demonstrated he cares little about suffering. I think if something like this is happening, it is orchestrated by someone else, perhaps Pence. I do think Pence is fully capable of threatening the other party in this manner. I think he has very little conscience himself, and will do what it takes to get what he wants. Right now, he wants Trump’s voters to vote for him when he runs himself, and he wants a theocracy (unfortunately, those two things are not incompatible).
@Iknklast #3 – Good point that some might think it could be useful as ammo against the Dems.
If so, I hope they don’t fall for it. The Dems might have refused to give Trump whatever he wants, but it’s Trump who has chosen to not fund the government as a consequence of not getting his way. He could pick any other lever he wanted in retaliation, and I’m sure he has many. He could refuse to sign any other bill at all; in fact, he could refuse to sign all other bills that cross his desk, except the ones that continue to fund the government, until he gets his border wall. The specific choice he has made, to not sign government funding bills, and hold hundreds of thousands of other people hostage to try and put pressure on the Dems, is entirely his own. Democratic and Republican members of congress have all agreed on funding to re-open the government; only Trump is preventing that.
I think the scariest thing I’ve heard about this situation recently is that if Congress does agree to Trump’s terms there’s nothing stopping him from continuing to shut the government down over increasingly-escalating demands–if it works once, he’ll keep doing it. (That and, as has been pointed out, no government services for non-elites is a feature not a bug.)
Very much so. He absolutely would and will.
It’s McConnell’s shutdown as much as it is Trump’s. He has a veto-proof majority to pass a funding bill, but he won’t bring it up for a vote without Trump’s watch word. Which isn’t how the separation of powers is supposed to work, but conservatives never do seem to care about things like that, for some reason.
McConnell used up all his veto-proof power blocking Obama’s Supreme Court nominee. He’s now completely powerless until a Democrat sits in the Oval Office. Sorry.
The only thing that will cause the reopening of the government is if the republican congress starts to feel that they are in danger of not getting reelected. Otherwise, this is how Trump will ride out his term.
This is basically how Trump conducted himself in the real estate business. First, you get a loan based on an unrealistically low estimate (because the lower amount makes approval easier to get). Then, once the building is half-done, you go back to the bank and say “well, we’re out of budget, so either you lend us more, or we shut down construction, the property sits idle and unprofitable, and you never get paid back on what you already loaned.” And on the other end, you stiff the contractors and demand they settle for a fraction of what they’re due, or else they’ll have to spend years (and lots of money) in litigation hoping you haven’t declared bankruptcy by the time they get a judgment.
He got away with it for quite a while before banks wised up. (I’m not sure if contractors ever did; many did, I think there’s just more contractors than banks.)
So it’s not surprising that he thinks this will work with the Democrats — every other time in his life, his hostage-taking has succeeded. But he hasn’t realized that this is a repeated game, whereas the Dems know they have to stand firm or he’ll take more hostages.
Wasn’t it Trump who once said something to the effect that only chumps take out small loans? Owe a few thousand and the bank won’t think twice about foreclosing, but owe a few millions and they’ll work with you ’till Hell freezes over and will even lend you more rather than lose such a large amount.