Fergawdsakes
by digby
President Trump slammed his hand on a table and stormed out of a White House meeting with congressional leaders on Wednesday after Speaker Nancy Pelosi of California said she would not fund a wall along the southern border, dramatically escalating the confrontation over the government shutdown.
Stunned Democrats emerged from the White House meeting declaring that Mr. Trump had thrown a “temper tantrum.” The president’s allies accused Democrats of refusing to negotiate. Then he tweeted that the meeting was “a total waste of time.”
They keep acting like this a negotiation. This is not a negotiation. You can't negotiate by offering someone something they didn't ask for and then claim you've compromised as he'd done on the silly "steel barrier vs concrete wall" thing.
This isn't a negotiation either. In fact, it's remarkably inane:
"If I agree to open the government that I've shut down, will you totally capitulate to my demands" is not a negotiation. It's putting a gun to their heads and saying "my way or the highway."
I'm convinced that this is now kabuki. He is planning to declare a national security emergency so that the government can re-open, the courts can sort out his decisions and he can blame the Democrats. He didn't want to do that speech last night but they convinced him to do it so he could claim that he was acting in "good faith" first.
Unfortunately for him, he continues to stick his foot in his mouth by admitting that this isn' actually about an emergency:
As Vox’s Emily Stewart detailed in her explainer about national emergencies, Trump would surely face stiff legal challenges if he goes this route. And the fact he admitted that his considerations are all about politics won’t help his case.
He should just go ahead and do it so that the government can re-open. It's a horrible precedent because it's yet another example of this president seeking autocratic powers to bypass democratic norms but it's the only way they can deal with this petulant toddler of a president at the moment. Counting on the courts is risky. But giving him his wall is a recipe for even more reckless behavior.
And by the way, there is no requirement that such abuse of power has to be illegal to be impeachable.
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