OH NO The Democrats Shut Down The Government! In The Future! Say Liars And Idiots And Donald Trump! (Redundant!)
Mexico will definitely pay for it, but first the Democrats have to
As we've already noted, Donald Trump really wants a big legislative win to help make him look better before his 100th day in office. Maybe he can get it by blowing up health insurance. He needs a win. Or rather, another win, since he's already accomplished more than any other president ever:
It's a ridiculous media standard, and Donald Trump can't stop talking about how brilliant his first 100 days have been.
Maybe -- at the very least -- he could consider it a win if he can keep the government from shutting down, which Congress can accomplish by passing a Continuing Resolution (CR) by next Friday, since of course there's no real budget bill yet, and presumably there never will be again. There's just one itsy-bitsy wrinkle: The president has decided that any CR bill absolutely must include money to fund the Great Border Wall, because didn't you know he won the election and therefore is entitled to as many wishes as he wants?
White House budget director Mick Mulvaney explained how this must-pass bill simply has to have border wall funding in it, even though the wall is definitely going to be paid for by Mexico once the Trump administration can find a way to send Seal Team Six to seize and empty Mexico's treasury.
Mulvaney told The Associated Press in an interview that “elections have consequences” and that “we want wall funding” as part of the catchall spending bill, which lawmakers hope to unveil next week.
The former GOP congressman from South Carolina also said that the administration is open, though undecided, about a key Democratic demand that the measure pay for cost-sharing payments to insurance companies that help low-income people afford health policies under the Affordable Care Act.
So we absolutely must fund the Border Wall that was Trump's campaign pipe dream, and maybe, if R's feel like it, they'll fund the premium subsidies that are actually written into existing law. And if Democrats say hell no to that madness, then obviously they're the ones who are unreasonable.
Conservative TV Shouty-Man Hugh Hewitt explained how this works in a series of Tweets Thursday (we've chopped the three tweets down to just the words):
Several people pointed out to Hewitt that the Republicans actually control the White House and both Houses of Congress, but he wasn't at all impressed, because Democrats in the Senate could still refuse to fund the beautiful wall Trump so clearly earned, and thereby shut down the government:
Terrible mean bad Democrats! It's exactly like the government shutdown of 2013, where Barack Obama and the Dems demanded continued funding of the ACA, a law that was already in effect, so the Republicans shut down the government to make it go away, but because the shutdown didn't end the ACA, it was Barack Obama's fault. Now, the situation is exactly the same: Donald Trump wants funding for a thing nobody in Congress has yet voted on, and which polls show Americans don't think is worth shutting down the government over, so if eight Senate Democrats won't join Republicans in funding this last-minute demand from Donald Trump, clearly Democrats take all the blame for shutting down the government.
Or to put it more succinctly, it's always Democrats' fault. Don't you sillies understand anything about how government doesn't work?
We have a feeling Donald Trump may bend a little bit on this one to avoid headlines saying his last-minute demand for funding his border-wall folly ended up shutting down the government on his 99th day in office. Fox, Breitbart, and Hugh Hewitt will be very sad that the Lamestream Media won't see it their way, but then, they probably think that anyone who refuses to go along with a perfectly reasonable request when a gun is held to their head is a pretty stubborn jerk who made the gunman shoot them.
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[ MaddowBlog / Time / Hugh Hewitt on Twitter / Roll Call ]
OH NO The Democrats Shut Down The Government! In The Future! Say Liars And Idiots And Donald Trump! (Redundant!)
Show us the pound cake.
Can I toss Tillerson, Mnuchin, and DeVos into the same cement mixer?