Wall Shtick

Trump Shutdown:  The partial government shutdown went into effect at midnight on Friday after the Senate failed to pass the House’s version of a funding bill, the one with $5 billion of wall funding. As expected Senate Majority Leader McConnell couldn’t get anywhere near the votes needed to pass a bill that included Trump’s billions, so he threw his arms up in frustration, sent the Senate home and told Trump that the only way to resolve the funding stalemate was for him to negotiate directly with Democratic leadership.  In response Trump held a White House negotiating session with his usual crowd of rightwing cronies but without Nancy and Chuck.  Alabama Senator Shelby, the Chair of the Senate Appropriations Committee, tried to broker a deal, with input from VP Pence and son- in-law Kushner who is now Trump’s go to legislative aide as a result of his criminal justice reform success, but he too gave up once he realized that there was no point in trying to get between Trump, who remains captive to the demands of his rightwing Cable TV bosses, and the Schumer-Pelosi duo.  Though Trump continues to assert that the shutdown is due to Nancy and Chuck’s intransigence, few outside of his most dedicated base are buying his narrative largely because the video of him saying that he’d be happy to take responsibility for the shutdown is playing on a continuous loop alongside the NORAD tape of  Santa and his sled.  It now appears that Trump has lowered his $5 billion demand, but still wants more than the $1.3 billion that Schumer and Pelosi are willing to deliver.  The Democratic duo might consider a very modest increase in funding but only if it the all the funds are allocated for items other than the wall or as it is now called the “slatted steel fence.”  It doesn’t help Trump’s position that his new Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney made fun of his wall shtick back in 2015, when he said "The fence doesn't solve the problem. Is it necessary to have one, sure? Would it help? Sure. But to just say build the darn fence and have that be the end of an immigration discussion is absurd and almost childish for someone running for president to take that simplistic of [a] view." Former Governor Christie whose decision to  turn down the Chief of Staff spot is looking more and more brilliant, pointed out that Trump is just a grumpy old men, a Waspy alta cocker (Yiddish for old fart),  too set in his ways to change and departing Senator Bob Corker called the shutdown a made up fight as he summoned the “daycare staff.” Nor does it help that Democrats keep pointing out that most of last year’s border security funds haven’t been spent, that most of the fentanyl making it across the border comes hidden in vehicles legally crossing through official checkpoints, and that efforts to curtail illegal drug traffic would benefit far more from  funds for sophisticated scanning equipment and more trained border agents at the checkpoints than the construction of the Trump slat wall.  With Congress closed, there is no chance that anything will be resolved until Thursday and it remains quite possible that the government will remain partially shuttered until January when soon to be Speaker Pelosi takes control of the House.

Spinning Doors:  It looks like Trump’s reading skills really are frozen at the Pat The Bunny level.  Though he was fairly annoyed that General Mattis contradicted the retirement version of his departure, Trump failed to comprehend that Mattis’ “I Quit” letter included a really stern rebuke of all things Trumpian.  However, after a few days of watching cable TV, he finally got the message that he had been seriously dissed, so yesterday Trump accelerated Mattis’ departure by two months, telling the respected former General to clear his medals out of the White House locker by year end.  Actually the feckless Trump didn’t notify Mattis directly, instead he sent current toady of choice, Secretary of State Pompeo to deliver the “get out now” message.  Once the ball drops on New Year’s Eve, Defense, like Justice and the EPA will become the third cabinet level department headed by an Acting Secretary and that doesn’t count the still unconfirmed UN Ambassadorship, a position that will be downgraded once Nikki Haley checks out next week.  At least for the time being Deputy Secretary of Defense Patrick Shanahan will be the acting Defense Secretary.  Shanahan is a former Boeing executive who had been focusing on the establishment of another one of Trump’s obsessions, the creation of an independent space force, an assignment that had earned him some Trump face time. As to Mattis, expectations are that his departure will trigger an exodus at Defense, so it doesn’t come as much of a surprise that Brett McGurk, the highly respected US Envoy responsible for coordinating the fight against ISIS, announced his resignation over the weekend.  McGurk had been planning to leave in February but, like Mattis, was so stunned and disheartened by Trump’s decision to immediately withdraw US troops from Syria that he accelerated his plans.  McGurk who served under both Bush and Obama is credited with deftly knitting together the international coalition against ISIS, he had recently reassured allies that the US was fully committed to maintaining its force in Syria so he felt personally betrayed by Trump’s decision. As to that Syria decision, its been confirmed that Trump unilaterally decided to immediately withdraw US troops after Turkey’s President Erdogan told him that he was about to launch an attack against our allies, the Syrian Kurds.  Instead of pushing back against Erdogan’s plans, Trump shocked both his advisors and Erdogan by saying that the Syrian mess was now fully Erdogan’s responsibility. Erdogan was so gleeful about Trump’s unexpected concession that he promised to take care of eliminating the remaining ISIS fighters and maybe just maybe hold off on slaughtering the Kurds, at least for a week or two.  For the record, although Trump insists that ISIS is mostly vanquished, estimates are that about 20,000 fighters remain in the region.  As to McGurk, Trump shrugged off his resignation, claiming that he was just another Obama plant with no discernable function who he had never met, a Trumpian version of good riddance that says a whole lot more about Trump’s isolation and ignorance than McGurk’s accomplishments.  Though Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell still has his job, the word at the White House is that Trump is so angry about the Fed’s recent interest rate hike, particularly the impact that rising rates has on his real estate holdings, that he asked aides if he could send Powell out the door with Mattis. Much to his disappointment Trump was told that he lacks the power to fire Powell over policy differences and that kicking him out would cause even more market turmoil. Treasury Secretary Mnuchin was so concerned about Trump’s musing that he tweeted assurances from his Cabo San Lucas, Mexico lounge chair that Powell’s job was safe, following up with calls to banking chiefs intending to assure them that Trump was just venting but instead freaking them out further by asking whether or not they had enough liquidity on hand to withstand more extreme market dips. Already on the talk show circuit to defend Trump’s government shutdown, Chief of Staff Mulvaney, another one of those guys with “acting” in front of his title, reinforced the  message that Powell was safe, at least for now.  With all the attention on Defense and the Fed,  HUD Deputy Secretary Pam Patenaude decision to jump ship escaped notice. Patenaude’s departure is a bigly problem because with her clueless boss HUD Secretary Ben Carson knowing nothing about housing, she had been running the department.  Acting Attorney General Whitaker remains in place at Justice, overseeing the dependable Rod Rosenstein who is in turn supervising Special Counsel Mueller, but he is finding that being on the Trump team isn’t all rainbows and lollipops.  Apparently Trump reamed him out for failing to stop the Southern District of New York prosecutors from including his transgressions in their Michael Cohen sentencing report. Not even an All Day Sucker will calm Whitaker’s nerves once he lands on soon to be House Judiciary Chairman Nadler’s hot seat.    

Yikes:  In a split decision, the Supreme Court refused to allow the Trump administration to immediately enforce a new policy of denying asylum to those who illegally cross into the US from Mexico.  Chief Justice John Roberts joined with the court’s liberal wing in the five to four decision. Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, a member of that wing, managed to get her vote counted even though she is in the midst of  another heath crisis, on Friday it was reported that she had a lobe of one of her lungs removed after two lesions that were “accidentally” discovered during recent scans of her broken ribs tested cancerous.  Though she is still recuperating at NYC’s Sloan Kettering cancer center, her PR team reported that she is already working from her hospital bed. She may be thinking about the case of the “secret” foreign government-owned corporation that is fighting a Mueller subpoena.  On Sunday Justice Roberts issued an order temporarily staying a contempt citation and financial penalties against the undisclosed firm, pending additional filings which are due by December 31. 

A Happy and Healthy Festivus to All, Especially RBG!