1.20.19: The President Is Holding America Hostage

With regard to the on-going government shutdown, now in its 30th day, let's consider a few perspectives taken from today's program. First, American Enterprise Institute's Danielle Pletka explained that with the state given by President Trump yesterday, he has moved in offering some concessions to the Democrats, like 3-year temporary relief for DACA individuals and temporary status for immigrants seeking asylum. This is something the hard right has already called 'giving amnesty.' However, she ignored the core argument of the shutdown, which NBC's Heidi Przybyla clarified, which was that the Democrats are not going to negotiate border security while the government is shuttered. Virginia Senator Mark Warner (D) described it as hostage-taking and that Democrats will not negotiate under those circumstances.

Mr. Warner makes the correct argument inasmuch that if Democrats give into the president and his demand for a wall, what that means is that they have rewarded the Mr. Trump for unreasonable action, in order to end the shutdown. It sets a bad precedent in negotiating that any time the president wants something and doesn't get it, he will shutdown the government. To that end, Mr. Warner has it correct - first, open the government and then negotiate on border security, which runs counter to what Congresswoman Liz Cheney (R-WY) said in first getting border security and then opening the government. Ms. Przybyla also noted that there has been talk from the hard right about another shutdown over funding for Planned Parenthood - cut it off or shutdown the government again.

On both sides of the border, the president has shown no sympathy for the dignity of humanity. His administration has punished and dehumanized migrants and asylum seekers by separating people from their children and locking them in cages, while on this side of the border he has created hardships for not only the 800,000 federal employees but millions if you count their families and the businesses that economically rely on their business. The stories of hardship are innumerable, in which the president and he alone deserves the blame. His callousness has only served to hurt hardworking Americans.

As the panel discussed, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) and the Democratic leadership are fighting for the principal of not giving into the hostage taking that the president is committed to. Senate Majority leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) is willing to sit on the sideline and wait for Democratic capitulation as he's only interested in a political win. We know this because in the two years that the president presided over a completely Republican-controlled congress there was no sense of urgency for the wall and no threat of a government shutdown. If it was so urgent why didn't Mr. Trump force the issue then when he had the votes? Reason: Because there is no emergency as the president describes it at the southern border.

Ms. Cheney explained that Republicans voted for paying people while still having the government shuttered, but this is like putting a Band-Aid on a severed limb, only marginally helping individuals forced to return to work but not the hundreds of thousands have been furloughed. When the shutdown ends, which as NPR's Joshua Johnson mentioned none of us knows when that will be, the president will be the face of the pain it's inflicted.

The blame for all this disfunction squarely sits with Donald Trump. Hard stop. Not only has he taken 800,000 government workers hostage, he's taken all of us hostage.

The rest of us suffer through the president's personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani continually changing the story on how the president or his campaign interacted with Russia. Not only did Mr. Giuliani deny that he said that there was never any collusion with Russia by the campaign earlier this week on CNN, today he said that the president had discussions about a Trump Tower Moscow project as late as October 2016, maybe even into November, which runs contrary to what the president had said during the campaign. Discussions about the project are 'dealings.' To use a word that Mr. Trump and Mr. Giuliani are fond of, the various entanglements the Trumps have had with Russia are disgraceful.

Mr. Giuliani even contradicted himself in today's interview when he first said that the president denies ever having the 'take it easy of Flynn' conversation with then FBI Director James Comey and then less than two minutes later he said that when the president had the conversation with Mr. Comey about Michael Flynn that did not amount to obstruction. 'Moving the goal posts' isn't an apt description because it suggests that this is some kind of game. It's anything but, and all Mr. Giuliani is doing and he knows it, is trying to create confusion for what is surely nefarious activity on the part of Donald Trump.


Panel: Heidi Przybyla, NBC; Danielle Pletka, American Enterprise Institute; Joshua Johnson, NPR; Peter Baker, The New York Times

One more thing...
This is what Donald Trump has wrought upon our country...

Boys from a Catholic school in MAGA hats mocking a native American. Hardly great... There are other words to describe this but this blog has a sense of decorum. A Kentucky diocese has already apologized for this incident. Should have never happened...

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