Nancy Pelosi's Hand Goes UP, Trump Aides' Mouths Go SHUT

LOL! AND THEN HE SAID...

Some fun details on Nancy and Chuck's dinner date with Donald t'other day, courtesy of WaPo's Ashley Parker, who tries to untangle what the hell actually got said about DACA and DREAMers and Trump's "Midas touch of low-grade uncertainty he seems to sow in others and exhibit himself while operating comfortably from within the maelstrom." We learn that the reported Chinese menu for the dinner was both a signal that Trump (or an aide, let's be honest) remembered Schumer's fondness for takeout from Hunan Dynasty in DC, and also "represented their shared hard-line view on trade with China," which has to be from Schumer, since Trump has never indicated he knows what a meta's phor. And we learn that whatever Trump may have said about DACA over that dinner, he subsequently decided to spin it as many ways as there are people he wants to please -- or annoy. And most goodest, we learned that Nancy Pelosi doesn't take any shit from mansplaining boys:

At one point, Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross asked, “What exactly does the president get out of this deal?” As Pelosi, the only woman at the table of 11, tried to make her point -- that the president gets the cooperation of the Democrats, which he will likely need on a host of issues -- the men in the room began talking over her and one another.

“Do the women get to talk around here?” Pelosi interjected, according to two people familiar with the exchange.

There was, at last, silence, and she was not interrupted again.

We can only imagine Pelosi accompanied that with the Jagoff Says WHAT? death-glare she used when Joe wossname interrupted Barry Obama with "You Lie!":

And then of course there's the predictable fuck-tussle of "what the hell did Trump agree to, anyway?" games, perhaps best embodied by the unnamed White House spokeswoman who declarified Trump's DACA position on Air Force One yesterday by insisting,

“The president has been clear that there will be no amnesty” before adding that the administration’s plan for immigration changes “could include legal citizenship over time.”

Just not the kind of citizenship that would be amnesty, of course. Trump added to the chaos in Florida, where he also nonsplained,

No, we’re not looking at citizenship. We’re not looking at amnesty. We’re looking at allowing people to stay here.

But let us return to Pelosi and her take on what comes next on DACA. According to Politico, Pelosi addressed Democrats' worries that there shouldn't be any "increased border security" strings on a measure to allow DREAMers to finally get some kind of permanent status -- ideally a path to citizenship -- by telling House Democratic whips Thursday

that despite “some misunderstandings in the press about a deal, we made a deal to make a deal. We made a deal to go forward.”

“So let us embrace our success instead of tinkling all over it, as we have a tendency to do all over ourselves,” Pelosi added, according to a source in the room. “Because this — I’m just being very honest with you, OK? Because we don’t have the majority.”

She doesn't want to be a wet blanket, she just wants to remind Dems about that old "politics is the art of the possible" thing, what with a Republican majority and president, however befuddled and fractious they are. Also, nice sly use of "tinkle," Madam Minority Leader: You really know how to sweet-talk Trump, don't you? Just restrain that impulse to make prank phone calls to the White House asking if "Ivana Tinkle" is there.

As for the path to citizenship, which really should be the end goal, Politico has this:

Schumer, Pelosi, and Trump specifically agreed to work on a path to citizenship on Wednesday night, a source familiar with the talks said. The Democratic leaders referred to DACA and not DREAM in their subsequent statement to improve prospects for a final deal with Trump, who shies away from the latter term and prefers the former.

It sounds to us like Nancy and Chuck know how to play Trump -- they just need to explain to him that a path to citizenship that isn't really amnesty was his idea all along.

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[ WaPo / Politico ]