Day 702: Trump plays negative-3D chess with government shutdown

There are political tacticians. And then there’s Donald Trump.

No one could bungle a government shutdown around the holidays quite like Trump. With the government officially partially shutdown as of Saturday at 12:00 a.m., examining how things ended up how they did displays Trump’s laughable negotiation strategy.

First, he declared that he’d be solely responsible in the event of a shutdown.

There’s nothing quite like kneecapping yourself by announcing to the world that you’re responsible if partisan sides fail to meet in the middle.

Then, Republicans and Democrats in the House and Senate agreed to a continuing resolution to fund the government for a few more months, essentially kicking budgetary issues down the road.

But Trump announced that he would not sign anything that failed to include $5 billion in funding for his border wall, stunning and angering congressional Republicans. With Democrats set to take back control of the House in less than two weeks, he knows his wall dream largely dies then. But he also has to know that there’s no appetite for a wall now either and that’s a non-starter for Democrats. With Republicans needing 60 votes to prevent a filibuster in the Senate, a funding bill would never end up on his desk.

And just like that, Trump not only guaranteed a shutdown, but guaranteed that he would get blamed for one. Of course, that didn’t prevent him from laughably flip-flopping on his “blame me” speech.

Republicans control the House, Senate and presidency, yet the government is shut down again. With the Senate adjourned until December 27th, hundreds of thousands of government workers will not collect a paycheck around the holidays. Not only is this indefensible, it was entirely preventable.

Trump engineered the worst possible situation politically for himself and Republicans.

702 days in, 760 to go

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