or It's a manhood thing, you wouldn't understand
Our President loves a good show. He had hoped to put Chuck and Nancy on the spot, make them cave to his demands in front of a live national audience. For some reason, he thought he held the upper hand in negotiations over a year-end budget that should have been done months ago, but dragged because of his insistence on funding for his notorious wall.
Some Republicans are willing to give him this wall, notably Ted Cruz, who had to solicit Trump's aid to hold onto his Texas Senate seat. But, Chuck and Nancy know the numbers don't favor Trump. Many Republicans have no more interest in this wall than do Democrats, and it is doubtful such a spending bill will get through the House, let alone the Senate, where he needs 60 votes.
In typical Trump fashion, he laid out his hand for all to see, thinking he had a royal flush, but he had nothing. Mike Pence sat like an elf on the shelf, listing to one side, saying nothing, while Trump prattled on, ultimately damning himself by publicly stating he would be proud to shut down government if he didn't get funding for his wall.
Sadly for Trump, the wall has become an issue among his base because they were led to believe this was the one promise he could deliver. Ann Coulter has railed against him on the airwaves. Tucker Carlson appears to have lost all faith in him. Joe Walsh tells his conservative audience that Trump has "betrayed his country." The wall was to be his defining accomplishment. If he couldn't get the Mexicans to pay for it, then bloody hell he would get Congress to pay for it!
Instead, Trump threw himself behind a tax cut of $1.5 trillion, largely favoring the rich, never pausing to think that maybe he should tie his wall to it. After all, $25 bil is pocket change in relation to $1500 billion.
Congress was willing to give him a down payment on the wall, $1.5 billion or something like that, which he took and some segments have been built along the border, but not enough to satisfy his base, which wants the whole border closed off so no more migrant caravans and gangs of rapists and murderers ride through the gaping holes. So, Trump tried to attach his wall to the spending bill before Christmas, willing to freeze nearly a million federal employees salaries, just so he can appease his base.
The problem for Republicans is that Trump's base is their base, and he still carries a lot of clout among them. Ted knows this. He wouldn't have been re-elected without the Trumpkins coming out to vote this past November, barely hanging onto his seat as it is. That's why he stood up in the Senate and demanded full funding for the wall. Other Republican Senators are not so sure. The past midterms showed they are vulnerable to a blue wave in the next election and aren't so keen to stake their political future on a wall no one really needs or wants.
It's not like the Democrats aren't willing to give him something. Chuck and Nancy were offering an additional $1.5 billion toward the wall in the next budget. What are numbers anyway. He can always conflate them like he does everything else. No, the Trumpster says $5 billion and nothing less, as if he were trying to swing a real estate deal.
Chuck hung his head while Nancy squared off with the Donald, refusing to give him any ground, as she knew she had to show her Democratic Party that she was tough enough to handle the Bully-in-Chief, which many feared she wasn't. Adding salt to the wound, she questioned his manhood afterward. There will no doubt be consequences, as the Donald isn't going to take the beating he took lightly, but for now Nancy proved herself Queen of the Hill.
The problem with Donald is that he is too easy to figure out. There's no complexity, no nuance to his actions. It is all plainly obvious what he is trying to do. To a large extent, this is why his base loves him. There is nothing to have to discern. He is what he says he is -- a crass businessman who issues ultimatums and expects everyone around him to jump at his orders.
For the most part, he has been able to create the illusion that this has resulted in gains for Americans, as the GDP kept rising and unemployment kept sinking throughout 2018. However, we have seen a volatile Dow Jones, which for all its ups and downs is at the same point now that it was at the beginning of the year. This after enjoying a 5000-point rise the previous year that he made sure to remind everyone of each time it crossed another 1000-point plateau.
It's not just the Dow. All markets have been flat around the globe, as investors wait and see what comes of the US trade wars with China, Canada, Mexico and the EU. Trump proudly hails his tariffs as he now hails a government shutdown, oblivious to the volatility it causes in the markets. For him it is a manhood thing. He has to show everyone who's the boss.
His latest effort to show he is a big man was to have Canada arrest the chief financial officer for Huawei, Meng Wanzhou, who also happens to be the daughter of the owner of the Chinese telecommunications company. This amounts to nothing more than kidnapping, holding her ransom over a trade deal Trump desperately wants with China to show his tariffs worked. Sadly, this kind of thuggish behavior appeals to his base, which is why Trump does it.
He doesn't give a rat's ass about international protocol or the prospect of retaliation by China. There are many Americans who work in China, some for big companies like Apple and Google, both trying to negotiate lucrative deals with the country. What's to stop China from arresting their CFOs for some trumped-up charge? As it is, China detained Canadian diplomat Michael Korvig to remind Canadian officials it shouldn't be acting as a proxy for the United States.
I'm really surprised Canada would put itself in the middle of this mess, but then it recently signed a new North American trade deal with Trump, so I guess it felt it had to honor the US Justice Department's request to detain Meng over charges that Huawei broke US sanctions in Iran. This is a very slippery slope, as most countries aren't recognizing US sanctions in Iran, including Canada. It was the US who broke with the Iran Nuclear Deal, ratified by China, the EU, France, Germany, the UK, Russia and Iran, all of which still honor it. But, Trudeau didn't want to make a big spat with the US so soon after signing a "historic" trade agreement. He's still trying to resolve the ongoing steel and aluminum tariffs the US imposed on Canada, which is crippling its auto industry.
The first year, Trump essentially got a free ride. The economy was booming because Obama had left a strong economy in his hands. The federal budget at times was in the black thanks to policies set by the previous administration. After the ill-advised tax cuts at the end of 2017 and the tariffs that have dominated 2018, Trump now finds himself with a spiraling debt and an economy teetering on the edge of collapse. Last week, the Dow dropped more than 1400 points in a 24-hour period, before rebounding slightly at the end of the second day of this precipitous drop.
The Dow has had several nosedives over the past year. It has managed to recover from each one, as it is currently recovering from its latest sharp fall. Investors are skittish because they don't feel the Trump administration has command of the economy. Steve Mnuchin, his Treasury secretary, and Jerome Powell, his Federal Reserve Chief, are offering nothing more than stop-gap remedies to a major crisis in the making. It is very reminiscent of the efforts the Bush White House made to stave off a major recession back in 2006 and 2007, only for the economy to finally implode in 2008. What took Bush eight years to destroy, Trump will need only four years, if not less.
For that reason, the wall is nothing more than a distraction, a way to divert the public's attention away from far more serious problems on the event horizon. His advisers have him talking about his pet project because they don't want him talking about the economy, which he knows nothing about. He still seems to think everything is fine.
What's a wall in the broader context of things? We already have a wall, or at least a fence, along most of the border. We just need to shore it up a little, make it more beautiful. Plant some hedges on the American side so that no one sees it after a few years. Come on, Chuck and Nancy, surely we can work out some kind of deal before Christmas? Wake up, Mike, and take that silly cap off your head!
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