Posted on 01/09/2018 6:09:32 PM PST by Kaslin
President Donald Trump has been besieged by allegations, rather ludicrous ones, that he’s somehow unstable and mentally unfit to be president. Michael Wolff’s new book, Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White, has been a public relations nightmare, despite multiple media figures and officials calling out its inaccuracies. Well, what happened today dispelled all of that. Cortney wrote it up earlier today. Trump held a bipartisan meeting with Democrats and Republicans on the subject of immigration. There was agreement that something had to be done for the DACA recipients, everyone was for border security, and there might be something on chain migration (via NYT):
President Trump on Tuesday appeared to endorse a sweeping immigration deal that would eventually grant millions of undocumented immigrants a pathway to citizenship, saying he would be willing to “take the heat” politically for an approach that many of his hard-line supporters have long viewed as unacceptable.
The president made the remarks during an extended meeting with congressional Republicans and Democrats who are weighing a shorter-term agreement that would extend legal status for undocumented immigrants brought to the United States as children. Mr. Trump has said such a deal must be accompanied by new money for a border wall and measures to limit immigrants from bringing family members into the country in the future, conditions he repeated during the meeting on Tuesday.
[…]
Seated with members of both parties during a meeting at the White House to discuss a narrower immigration agreement, the president said there was room for a compromise on DACA.
“We have something in common,” Mr. Trump said of Democrats. "We’d like to see this get done.”
But the president said he would insist on strict new immigration limits as part of any such measure, calling it a “bill of love.” Laying out conditions that many Democrats view as nonstarters, Mr. Trump said the legislation must fortify the nation’s borders; end “chain migration,” a term used by immigration critics to refer to immigrants’ ability to bring members of their extended family to the United States after gaining their own legal status; and cancel the diversity visa lottery program.
Watch President Trump and congressional leaders debate immigration policy pic.twitter.com/QSnhJmhfnF— NBC Politics (@NBCPolitics) January 9, 2018
We’ll see. Either way it was great spin for the president, who Democrats have tried to cast as mentally insane; he’s not. The extended media access was hailed as an unprecedented window into deal making by the media, though some had much more measured responses.
That was great @realDonaldTrump. You should do it again in the future.— Sam Stein (@samstein) January 9, 2018
I can never remember seeing a president convene a discussion of an issue with this many congressional voices and this many viewpoints being discussed publicly. Pretty remarkable day at the White House.— Rick Klein (@rickklein) January 9, 2018
Trump smart for opening immigration discussion to press. Public gets to see deal making POTUS at his best.— Steve Peoples (@sppeoples) January 9, 2018
Even CNN praised the extended pool spray, with Dana Bash saying that this meeting probably wouldn’t have gone any different if the cameras weren’t there, citing two Republicans at the meeting who told her they had no idea the cameras would stick around that long. She added that this is what people who voted for Trump hoped his presidency would look like, The Donald “in command.”
Shannon Pettypiece of Bloomberg added that given the allegations in the book, Trump needed to meet with Democrats and an image improvement and this meeting satisfied those two goals.
Bash’s CNN colleague John King said what we saw today was a very engaged president, one who was putting the pressure on both parties regarding their talking points on this issue, while saying he’s open to comprehensive immigration reform. It’s something that this town hasn’t seen in a while.
The issue has reached a level of criticality, as a government shutdown looms in the absence of a deal on immigration.
CNN’s Dana Bash On POTUS’s Bipartisan Meeting With Congress: He Was “In Command”
I will never forget them HERE using all the same buzzwords in the second half of 2016 to tell anyone who didn’t hate Trump more than BJ’s wife that they “worship” him.
The rat party is going to get what they want. Millions of new straight party Rat votes. Write it down.
No one doubts McSalley’s courage, but she is policy wise McTurd Jr. Absolutely not.
Believe me from on the ground here in AZ: Sheriff Joe’s announcement was almost entirely the work of RINOs and Club for Growth. I’d been hearing this for weeks, that they were looking to push him in to dilute Kelli Ward’s chances. McSalley will have not better chance against Sinema than Ward, perhaps worse if Trumpers are disgusted.
“The issue has reached a level of criticality, (Um, NOT a word!) as a government shutdown looms in the absence of a deal on immigration.”
Good. Shut Government Down. Send them all home WITHOUT pay. They can come back when they agree to fully fund our wall and not before. :)
Po’ ‘ol Stenny
Stenny Hoyer got to photogenically sit beside the President. He looked like his dog just died the whole time.
The leftist media has long been projecting the disengaged attitude of the pipsqueak obama onto DJT. obam’s only imperative was to contaminate the country with millions of noisy, entitled, unemployable locusts who would vote to elect powerful democrats who would send them a check and invite their entire bloodlines to come to the US to feed.
Ann Coulter is hyperventilating. Tucker Carlson is aghast.
But I just keep hearing a Richard Marx song in my head:
Cause it don't mean nothin' | The words that they say
Don't mean nothin' | These games that people play
No, it don't mean nothin' | No victim, no crime
It don't mean nothin' | Till you sign it on the dotted line
It's all just words. I feel that when I watch Trump in this meeting I'm watching someone doing something I cannot possibly understand. I can't hope to keep up. And neither can anyone else in that room(which is saying something when you really think about it.) Maybe I'm wrong. But I will wait and see.
Trump didn’t sound deranged, but duplicitous, yesterday. He sounded ready to sell America right down the sewer. All that was missing from the meeting was a white flag.
I think that Sheriff Joe Arpaio may have been put up to running for that Senate seat as a spoiler, to divide the vote, or at least make for a more divisive and damaging primary.
I agree with you that Trump’s highlighting of McSally signals a level of endorsement.
I like Arpaio only from what I have read of his history as an AZ sheriff. But the man is like 80 now...Is he really the right candidate for Senator in any case?
Yeah, Sen. Feinstein had the audacity to offer that deal out loud. Haha!
What the HECK is going on???!!!
Rush made one of my temples throb over this with his ‘2nd Take’. I was about to haul some firewood, but no way now. Blood pressure too high. Some of the quotes he’s featuring in the ‘Second Take’ are alarming.
I didn’t hear the meeting, and this lame headline did nothing to ‘grab’ me this morning.
Not if Wikileaks can help it. They posted online a PDF version of the book.
Is Trump farming out this entire issue to open borders goons? Did he at LEAST hold the line on the WALL?
Trump is in negotiation mode. Nobody knows anything yet. Patience. Watch.
I loved it when he said that they are lifetime politicians and he's only been one for two years or so.
Good advice.
[Deep sigh.]
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