Day 712: Trump publicly begs Pelosi to rescue him from self-made shutdown

Donald Trump began 2019 in virtually the same way he ended 2018: lies, anger and bizarre behavior.

He told everyone to “calm down and enjoy” the increasingly bumpy economic and political ride.

But amid the trolling, Trump revealed his very real concern about the government shutdown quandary he created: he can’t control Democrats quickly passing a clean bill in a few days. This would further prove that Republicans are the ones that are keeping the government from reopening.

So Trump — the self-described “master negotiator” — has resorted to publicly begging the presumed new speaker, Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), to come back to the negotiating table.

Trump has Pelosi’s phone number and all the back channels in the world to contact her. He knows he’s losing the battle in the public domain as to who is to blame for the shutdown. (It didn’t help his cause that he told everyone weeks ago that they could blame him if the government was shut down.) He also knows he’s never going to get a border wall as part of this deal. But his instinct to float some sort of possibility of compromise on Twitter and hope for the best is woefully short-sighted (much like his single-handedly forcing of a shutdown).

Trump is boxed in and he knows it. Like most political issues he delves into, he has no discernible strategy and no real plan to get out of it as millions of Americans suffer the effects of his forced shutdown. Democrats seem determined to let Trump twist in the wind, at least for now.

Democrats had a negotiated deal with Republicans already agreed to. However, it was Trump’s 11th hour announcement that he’d veto the measure that derailed it.

Publicly begging political rivals to bail you out is certainly a tactic that most presidents have never had to resort to, but there’s a first time for most things under Trump.

712 days in, 750 to go

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