My advice to co-workers in a dysfunctional organization where I worked recently was always “don’t go to Stupidland” – by which I meant that you shouldn’t accept an alternate, delusional reality just because the boss and his enablers are pounding the table and saying that up is down and black is white. With that in mind, let’s take a look at what just happened.
First, Trump shut down the government to get the wall that his own party (and Mexico) wouldn’t give him for two years. Things go by so fast in the Trump reign, and the press is so busy following the latest tweet, that this fact hasn’t been seared into the public mind the way it should be. The Democrat that I’ll support for President will make this point as part of their case against Trump, because it makes Trump look weak.
Second, Trump got his ass handed to him on the shutdown, because he didn’t get the wall (or really any concessions) by doing it. He was also shut out of the negotiations that led to the bill that the Senate just passed. Again, he looks weak, because he is.
Third, everybody knows that the declaration of emergency is pure, unadulterated wankery. Ann Coulter is already tweeting that out and the rest of the wall Nazis will follow, as they did when they stomped their feet hard enough to make Trump shut down the government. It will be tied up in the courts until the end of Trump’s term, if he makes it to 2020. I agree that it is yet another assault on our institutions, but I think we’ll weather it because not even Trump thinks it will work. It’s purely for face saving, and after Trump issues it, he’ll make noise about something else in hopes that we will all forget that he has no clothes.
This is a win for the Democrats, and for the country. Coulter and her ilk told Trump that it would be OK if he put his hand on the hot stove, so little Donny did it. And he got burned. If I know anything about narcissists, and sadly I do, Trump will think long and hard before he blindly follows the Coulterites into more wall-related stupidity. He’s going to find something else to gin up the hate of the rubes who follow him, but he wants to put this in the rear view mirror.
Baud
I didn’t expect this from you. Nice post.
schrodingers_cat
@Baud: Agreed! This is what I wrote in the last thread.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Baud: Agreed, good post. I’m a bit skeptical of Trump thinking anything though.
chopper
he didn’t even fucking try for most of those first two years. yeah, he pounded the podium at reelection rallies, but what bills did he push in congress to fund a wall? he tried once, then blew the whole thing up over DACA. i’m not even sure he pushed that bill in the first place.
zhena gogolia
I needed this post about now.
Keith P.
I just don’t get the thinking behind declaring a national emergency *now*, right after Congress gave him X dollars. If he had done it 2 months ago, he would have forced the Democrats to go to court to bring the shutdown back. Doing it now, there’s no leverage other than just doing it because he wants to prove he has that power. But he’ll go to court over it anyway, so by the time it’s resolved, the wall issue will be moot, and even if he won, all he would have done is given a huge amount of power to the next Dem president (kind of like how he want the Senate to kill the filibuster). Just a terrible strategist.
Anne Laurie
Seconded, with extra applause. As long as McConnell and the rest of the GOP don’t push this bullshit — and they won’t, if they want to keep their own jobs, which I’m pretty sure is McConnell’s one & only lodestar — this is chaff to distract the media.
Stupidland is Trump’s natural territory, but we don’t have to follow him there.
P.S. Any bets on which indictments will drop tomorrow?
WaterGirl
@chopper: That’s as close to “trying” as trump knows how to do.
chopper
he’s already shifting the gear selector to “A”. so, yeah.
Mike in NC
There are no more adults around to short-circuit Fat Bastard’s delusional, moronic plans. There’s just him, Miller, and Jarvanka sitting around a table trying to gaslight the country with his patented bullshit. It’s well past time for the impeachment train to leave the station.
Frankensteinbeck
I’m not sure ‘think’ is the right word, but yes, he knows he’s been beaten and is now afraid to challenge Nancy again. So is McConnell, from what I can tell.
bemused
There isn’t really anyone the turd can truly trust, even his own family if it comes to that. Funny how the backstabber hasn’t figured that out in 72 years but I suppose that’s not surprising in a malignant narcissist.
Brachiator
Here’s a little bit of legal history to put Trump’s Wall building into perspective.
Trump will be facing a blizzard of lawsuits over his Wall.
chopper
it’s hard to stop and think ‘shit, we won, didn’t we?’. because this timeline sucks.
imagine if we had given the speakership to someone else.
debbie
Coulter’s tweet is telling Trump it’s over if he even signs the bill. Do you think he will cross her and sign?
??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??
@debbie:
More importantly, if he decides to veto, will Congress override him?
oldgold
Trump is attempting to usurp the power of the purse from Congress. It is a an unambiguous illegal assault on our Constitutional Republic. It warrants the immediate issuance of Letters of Impeachment.
Cheryl Rofer
The Governor of New Mexico.
Gelfling 545
“Trump will think long and hard ”
That would be novel.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Brachiator: Yup, and he thought Amy Klobuchar was in a blizzard.
SiubhanDuinne
@Anne Laurie:
I’m not a betting woman. “Any of them, Katie” would suit me just fine. I will admit, though, if the FBI feels so inclined, a nice dawn raid would cheer me right up.
Mike in NC
@Keith P.:
Not any kid of a strategist, just a dumb former host of a cheesy reality TV show. Speaker Pelosi will have his tiny nuts in her purse. Again.
Cheryl Rofer
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Cheryl Rofer: So I’ll put her down as a “NO” on Wall.
Gravenstone
@??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??: It would likely piss enough of them off that even the Senate would slap down a veto. Republicans don’t want to get kicked in the teeth by another shutdown almost immediately after the last one.
dexwood
@Cheryl Rofer:
My gov, too. Thanks, I had not seen this until now. She doesn’t put up with fools.
SiubhanDuinne
@Cheryl Rofer:
What a nice turn of phrase! I don’t know one single thing about her, apart from the tweets you just shared, but I am very much liking your Governor MLG.
Edward Brennan
I’m not so sure I am so confident in the courts at this point in time. Further, I am not so confident that Trump is willing to wait for the courts.
Let’s face it the courts haven’t worked so well with the problem of family separations and that hasn’t stopped Trump often in spite of the courts. Tied up in courts, I think dealt with a different time and place. Not the current administration, nor a current court system that has been stolen by the far right.
I hope I’m wrong, but honestly, I watched torture go out the window with the last Republican administration and rise again, this time with ICE, under this one. I’m not sure that just out wait it is a moral response, nor one that for the long term protects the rule of law and the republic for which it stands.
I’m more with @oldgold on this one.
piratedan
I guess my biggest fear is what else is potentially poison-pilled into this declaration. Because these rat-fuckers will seize every opportunity to keep themselves in charge while they’re busy lifting your wallets…
Things that come to mind, do elections get suspended?
Does he get to assign to himself additional powers and privs?
Does he also pull shit like revoking birthright citizenry?
Does he kick people out of the country who are here on visas?
Does he continue to put kids in cages?
and while I understand that this will immediately end up in the courts, I’ve noted that the courts have a funny way of splitting the baby when it comes down to shit like this, even though anyone with functioning synapses that have not been polluted by Faux News and the Sinclair Syndicate knows that this is STILL bullshit, there are plenty that will “play the game” because that’s what they fucking do.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Mike in NC:
Fixed it for ya.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@piratedan:
No.
Not all that much.
No.
Maybe.
Yes.
bluefish
Delurking to say thanks because I read it just that way too. From start to finish. Plus I think Mitch is happy to shiv him in that little way he has. And he was made weaker also which leaves me very very happy.
Brachiator
Trump’s issues are much more than being a narcissist. It’s weird that he is so easily dominated by his need to please women, be they Ann Coulter or Nancy Pelosi. And of course his Shadow Father, Putin.
But Trump is also insistent on proving himself to his supporters, and in this he has held stubbornly to his white nationalist ravings and anti-Muslim mania. And he has already riled up the rubes with his blather about late term abortions. And he is adding to this his railing against the Green New Deal and other Democratic proposals. And of course, Wall. Wall now and forever.
It’s the perfect echo chamber. Trump pays attention to Fox News. And Fox News pays attention to and reinforces Trump. The thing is that I don’t think for a second that Trump believes in any of the stuff that he bloviates about. But he knows that it will sell to his supporters. And he is nothing if not a salesman.
oatler.
Throw us a frickin’ bone tomorrow, Mueller!
Mnemosyne
@Keith P.:
Repeating this, with emphasis, because that’s literally all this is: Trump the narcissist trying to prove that Nancy Pelosi isn’t the boss of him, even though she is. It’s like a teenager flipping off his mom behind her back.
Aleta
Yeah, but he and McConnell still should take a lot of heat for throwing the words around. They need to cut it out with the “n. emergen” and people shouldn’t be blasé about their use of it.
We knew he’d do something to save face. But their attempts to divide Ds over ‘see what you caused’ should be met with unity. IMO Pelosi reacted correctly with attention to the seriousness.
Kdaug
Venezuela
Immanentize
@oatler.:
No soup for you!
Roger Moore
@Keith P.:
The goal is to look like he’s doing something but the evil Demoncrats are blocking him. It lets him pretend he didn’t just lose badly.
Steve in the ATL
@?BillinGlendaleCA: I make that correction all the time as well.
Man, we both like photography, “all she wrote”, and now this—we could be BFFs!
Cheryl Rofer
@SiubhanDuinne: I thought that “an exhausting charade” exactly captured what we endure every day.
Brachiator
@Mnemosyne:
Trump and McConnell (because they are certainly working together) are trying hard to blunt the power of the Democratic House and Nancy Pelosi, and to stake out the outlines of Trump’s re-election strategy.
Pelosi ain’t Trump’s mother, and we should not forget that this is a nasty political struggle between a skilled operator, Pelosi, and an unstable but willful amateur, Trump, aided by an oily piece of shit with a strong survival instinct (McConnell).
jacy
Trump doesn’t care about getting the money. He doesn’t care about building the wall. He cares about declaring victory. (Regardless of the complete lack of victory.) When a narcissist can’t escape, he declares victory and moves on. In his little mind, once he declares a national emergency, he’ll wash his hands of the wall. He’ll tell his people he won and leave it behind. You already hear him doing it. Give it a little time the entire wall will have already been built.
He’s flailing. It’s not like he suddenly going to become competent and flail more effectively.
My only pause is what he’ll use to replace the wall now that it’s been built.
Emerald
For those following the danger to the National Butterfly Center, the federal judge just dismissed their case.
I believe, but could be wrong, that the sanctuary is specifically protected in the compromise legislation, so maybe this won’t matter.
Bet the judge is a trumper.
It is going to take decades to clean up this asshole’s mess.
SiubhanDuinne
@Brachiator:
Not to be all psychoanalytical here (for one thing, I am supremely unqualified), but when DJT was about two years old, his mother had another baby. There were major complications: mom didn’t come home for a long time (was hospitalised for several months IIRC). God knows I’m not excusing or defending him, but I can easily believe that a two-year-old would process that absence as “Wow, I must have been a Very Bad Boy for Mother to abandon me for so long. But it was HORRIBLE AND MEAN of her to do that!” Combine that fucked-up MotherDear shit with the malignant narcissism and bullying behaviour he learned from Daddy Fred, and it all starts to make terrifying sense.
Mnemosyne
@piratedan:
Here’s the thing, though: the reason they’ve been able to get away with the kids in cages shit is that refugees and illegal immigrants are in a weird gray zone outside of our normal judicial system where the Department of Justice gets to make all of the rules because it’s considered a civil matter, not a criminal case. IANAL, but I think they would have a much, much harder time getting away with shit that already has an existing body of law that says they can’t do it.
IOW, they can put kids in cages because no court has ever said they can’t. The other stuff you mentioned has been reviewed by the courts previously, so Trump’s guys would have to convince judges that the previous cases were wrongly decided.
Steve in the ATL
Slate at least knows how to write headlines!
West of the Rockies
@SiubhanDuinne:
Have I missed something? Is there reason to anticipate big doings from Muellerland?
joel hanes
No need for us to go to Stupidland ourselves
In 2017, Trump hijacked the nation and set our course thus, and we’re well on the way.,
Mnemosyne
@Kdaug:
Gesundheit! ?
Brachiator
@SiubhanDuinne:
Oh, I can easily believe there are all kinds of layers to Trump’s psychological damage. He tries desperately to please women, but also has a deep need to control and disrespect them. And he also has issues dealing with the female body and is alternately attracted and repulsed by them. Yeah, he is a sick puppy, and some of it could be related to reacting to and dealing with his mother.
Not an armchair analyst, I just love dissing the Donald.
SiubhanDuinne
@Brachiator:
C’mon over here [pats adjacent sofa seat invitingly.]
SiubhanDuinne
@West of the Rockies:
Oh, don’t I wish! No, am just indulging in fantasy.
mrmoshpotato
@joel hanes: My thoughts too – “Wait. This isn’t Stupidland? Where the hell have we been since 2017?”
mrmoshpotato
@Brachiator: Serious question – so you don’t think he really believes in being a racist POS?
debbie
@Emerald:
Bastard.
sm*t cl*de
Any talk of directing the US military to build WALL, or of redirecting money within budgets, should be accompanied by footage from that scene in Caligula where the emperor sends the Roman Army to the beach to collect sea-shells.
Brachiator
@mrmoshpotato:
Trump is a hard core racist. And he really wants to purify America by purging it of people he feels does not belong. But I don’t think he gives a shit about abortion or other political issues. He gets a thrill from having power and putting the Trump brand on everything, and having crowds adore him. He gets off on bending the GOP to his will and having them kiss his ass.
His main model of reality is a late 1950s racist America, the world he gree up in. His vision is ultimately that of a cruel and vindictive child. It is absent any coherent political ideology. He’s just giving right wing suckers what they want, while he enriches himself and his family.
Mnemosyne
@mrmoshpotato:
What Brachiator said, but also, Trump is a lazy motherfucker. He’s happy to pontificate and posture because it doesn’t take much effort, but he’s not really capable of a sustained effort to do, well, anything. Kids in cages was planned and directed by John Kelly — all Trump did was say, “Yeah, that sounds good.”
bk
@SiubhanDuinne: Sometimes an asshole is just an asshole.