Posted on 12/14/2018 12:06:58 PM PST by MountainWalker
It seems to me that Trump has enormous leverage over these negotiations if he so chooses to use it.
There is one decision that is completely within his control that Democrats are desperate but powerless to stop: the continued employment status of one Robert S. Mueller III. IMHO, late next week he should offer Democrats a promise that he will terminate Mueller effective midnight Friday night if a budget without $5B in border wall funding is not on his desk. He should also stipulate that if the government closes, the cost of re-opening it will increase $1B per day for a maximum of $70B of the total expected cost of a border wall. He should also say he is perfectly willing to keep the government closed for as long as he's still president if this border crisis remains unaddressed, be that 6 days or 6 years. The Democrats must choose between preserving this witch hunt or keeping the border open, and if they choose the latter, the government will not reopen for as long as he's still president.
I realize that Trump wants to clear his name of the Russian Collusion hoax/smear, but it's clear that Mueller is going to write a report that alleges some kind of unprovable crime like paying off some strumpet as a campaign violation. So, he's not going to get a clean victory either way. The media/Democrats have already moved on from the original point of this "investigation" like it never existed. Democrats will try to impeach him either way, so Mueller might as well be fired and Trump might as well be able to say that Democrats were given the option to keep him on but decided that border security wasn't worth it.
Thoughts?
Shut down the government. Keep it shut down, no back pay.
I was wondering something. Can Trump make recess appointments if he shuts the government down?
I live for the govt shut down/s
DO IT
LOL
I love Free Republic
Merry Christmas
Keep dreaming. There will always be back pay.
You mean “with” 5B not without right? Sounds like a plan to me. Shut it down, keep adding. He’s damned either way he goes, might as well go all in.
Yes, with. Sorry, got carried away with my conditionals. :-)
I like to dream. Only about 16% of the government shuts down. POTUS could eliminate 16% of government by doing nothing.
The problem is more the limp-wristed Republicans in the House and Senate. They could push through the entire immigration reform directly, now. They have the members in both chambers and could drop the 60-vote senate rule to do so. But, no, they don’t support Trump, don’t support America, don’t want to follow-through with any immigration reform. So they have thrown in the towel and are deferring to the Democrats while they scurry to their safe spaces.
Firing Mueller is a booby trap. Why do you want Trump to fall into it?
I don’t understand why the president doesn’t just have the money come out of the Defense Department, as he said he could. The wall could be halfway done by now. IF he can have Defense pay for it, why go through all this nonsense?
Because the current CR specifically prohibits him from doing that.
And during the shutdown, CLOSE THE BORDER!!!
The Republicans wrote prohibition on this and he signed it. He can talk but cannot spend DoD money to build the wall.
Well, it’s pretty useless to talk about it if it can’t be done. Doesn’t make him look like he knows what’s going on. Is it possible he can do this at some time in the near future?
1) Democrats are going to try to impeach him either way, which won’t succeed in the Senate and if anything may assist him in his reelection bid.
2) He’s giving the Democrats the opportunity to save Mueller’s job. He could even offer them a proviso that he can’t fire Mueller (unenforceable/unconstitutional anyway) in exchange for wall funding.
3) The last long government shutdown only ended because of the debt ceiling. The longer the shutdown, the more it hurts Democrats since it shows how meaningless shutdowns really are. The more often they happen, the less R’s will be afraid of them. It no longer remains leverage for Democrats if you learn to become indifferent about the idea of shutdowns.
4) I can see Democrats eventually telling their deranged base that they need to give Trump his wall money in order to reopen the government and begin impeachment proceedings, etc.
Any Republican worth their salt should welcome a government “shutdown”, which only affects “nonessential services”. Let it go on for a while and we can all find out just how nonessential those services are!
Shut it down without pay and when the money not paid will pay for the wall then open it up again.
Great question!
“I was wondering something. Can Trump make recess appointments if he shuts the government down?”
“Let it go on for a while, and we can all find out just how nonessential those services are!”
A great and low cost plan.
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