Today’s Twitter Tantrum Suggests Trump Sees Government Shutdown As His Golden Ticket

When the federal government runs out of money on January 19th, Donald Trump intends to hold America hostage via government shutdown until he gets his way.

Earlier this month, Congress passed a clean stop-gap measure that keeps the government running until the middle of next month. At some point, however, a budget needs to be approved, and Trump needs Democratic votes to do that.

That means it’s his responsibility to negotiate with them in good faith. We all know Republicans will march lockstep with him. So, if Trump wants Democratic support for a budget, he’ll need to offer them something they want in return with no strings attached.

Democrats want the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, also known as DACA, restored in order to prevent undocumented children from being cruelly deported.

That would be enough to get Democrats on board as long as there are no dirty tricks, which we all know Republicans are going to pull anyway.

But Trump is making passage of a budget even less likely because he is demanding several things in exchange for DACA, including funding for his expensive and useless border wall and a completely unnecessary overhaul of our immigration system.

Again, Trump’s wall will cost taxpayers billions of dollars, and it will be ineffective. Immigrants can still tunnel underneath it and sail around it by boat. Furthermore, it would be an eyesore that would require seizure of private property by the government. Seriously, it would feel like America is becoming the Soviet Union. This wall would be a version of the Berlin Wall.

Also, our vetting process for refugees and immigrants is extreme enough already. Several government departments are involved, and it can take years to complete.

And clearly, Trump wants more than that because he added “etc.” to the end of his demands. So who knows what else he expects to add to the budget.

It’s obvious that Trump is willing to shut the government down if he doesn’t get his way. Democrats have all the leverage here, yet he thinks he can make demands.

Democrats only want one thing, while Trump wants several things. That trade just won’t fly, and Democrats should stand their ground. Despite Trump’s preemptive effort to blame Democrats for an impending government shutdown, Americans would blame Republicans, who also just so happen to favor renewing DACA. Might we mention that Trump created this problem in the first place by repealing DACA earlier this year by executive order?

By tweeting his incomplete list of demands, Trump is signaling that he doesn’t want to negotiate. Instead, it looks like he is using this issue to pile on his wish list.

That’s not feasible. It’s lunacy. It’s a way to guarantee that there will be a government shutdown after January 19th, and Trump and the GOP will be to blame because they hate immigrants more than they love keeping this country up and running.

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