One Thing Is Certain

[RANT]
We have no idea what Trump is going to do next.

There used to be a saying that a person is a “loose cannon” and for certain I can say that is what Trump is and that is a very, very bad thing for a head of government to be.

First, why did the shutdown happen?

Trump originally said he would sign the  continuing resolution but in December but then he backed off and said he wouldn’t sign any bill that didn’t give him 5 billion dollars for his wall. Why did he change his mind?

Limbaugh, Coulter and friends bullied Trump into shutdown. Don't trash him for ending it.
USA TODAY Opinion By Scott Douglas Gerber
January 26, 2019

Right-wing pundits are not happy that President Donald Trump has agreed to reopen the federal government while he negotiates with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Democrats in Congress over funding for border security.

Upon hearing the news, conservative commentator Ann Coulter tweeted “Good news for George Herbert Walker Bush: As of today, he is no longer the biggest wimp ever to serve as President of the United States.”

Michael Malice — an anarchist author, columnist and media personality — posted a similarly mean-spirited tweet: “Apparently a wall isn’t as good as a cave.”

Tomi Lahren, a Fox Nation host, tweeted “It’s President Trump, not President Pelosi. Act like it.”

Breitbart, the alt-Right brainchild of former White House chief strategist to President Trump Steve Bannon, proclaimed on its website “GOVERNMENT OPEN … AND BORDER. NO WALL.”

As the saying goes, with friends like these who needs enemies?

Why would these want to tear down the nation?

May answer is greed. They know that their listening base wants to hear them attack the Democrats and the government. The article goes on to say…

To make the point another way, President Trump’s reactionary critics need to remember that there are more important things in life than trying to sell books, increasing TV and radio ratings, generating more page views on a website, and securing additional followers on Twitter. And make no mistake about it, crass self-interest is what motivates these commentators.

They don’t care about people losing their jobs and their homes. They don’t care that people lives were put in danger air traffic controllers who couldn’t afford not to get paid or the long lines at the air ports TSA because the inspectors couldn’t pay for day care for their children. All they cared about is their pocketbooks.

The pro-Trump Washington Examiner a paper owned Philip Anschutz who according to the Media Bias Fact Check is

…an American billionaire entrepreneur who describes himself as a “conservative Christian.” Anschutz is also the owner of the right leaning Weekly Standard and has donated millions of dollars to right leaning causes, including anti-LGBT groups, such as the Family Research Council, which has been labeled a hate group. The Washington Examiner is funded through an advertising and subscription model.

said,

Trump's border wall drama isn't over. This is just intermission
By Daniel DePetris
January 25, 2019

Trump, however, remained defiant. At the same time he asked lawmakers to work in unison for the benefit of the nation, he threatened to use the nuclear option if Congress can’t come up with a solution. "I have a very powerful alternative, but I did not want to use it at this time," Trump said in the White House Rose Garden. "Hopefully, it will be unnecessary.”
[…]
Democrats, who are as strongly opposed to a border wall as Trump is enamored by it, would not be powerless bystanders if the president tried to do an end-run around Congress. They could technically prohibit any money from being used for construction of a border barrier through legislation, although GOP opposition would likely kill it. They could file a lawsuit against Trump, arguing that his emergency declaration is not, in fact, an emergency, but rather an instigation of an artificial crisis in order to justify an unjustifiable project.

A lawsuit would work itself through the court system and wind up in the Supreme Court, where the case could prove to be one of the most important trials of executive power since the fight over military commissions in the George W. Bush era. The border wall could become a proxy war between the executive and legislative branches, a classic battle over constitutional power that the judiciary would have to arbitrate. If Trump loses that fight, the precedent it would set would impact the flexibility of presidents in the future to tap into their emergency powers.

Trump supporters haven't giving up and see this as a continuing battle/

In the CT Post they have an editorial by the Washington Post…

Shutdown was proof of Trump's stark incapacity for leadership

President Donald Trump's temper tantrum over Congress' refusal to fund a border wall paralyzed much of the government for five weeks, sapped the morale and wallets of hundreds of thousands of federal workers and low-wage contractors, left millions of Americans disgusted and dismayed, and diminished the United States in the eyes of the world. The impasse was proof of the president's stark incapacity for leadership, which he reconfirmed

Friday by threatening to re-shutter the government in three weeks

In announcing his non-deal with Congress - in fact, it is more cease-fire than solution - Trump rehashed his tired and truth-free arguments, asserting against logic and evidence that building a massive new border wall, to supplement hundreds of miles of barriers already in place along high- trafficked segments of the border, would cause crime to plummet and drug trafficking to dry up.
[…]
If Trump resists that - if he reverts to another shutdown in which he again treats as pawns hundreds of thousands of the "incredible" federal workers he lauded on Friday - he will simply pile failure upon failure. If he declares an emergency as a means to divert federal funds for building a wall, he will invite litigation in what amounts to a profoundly undemocratic end run.

Trump has failed as a dealmaker. Congress might yet salvage something worthwhile from this sorry episode.

The thing is that we have no idea what Trump is going to do, there is great uncertainly throughout the world. Our allies don’t know which way he will jump, our enemies don’t know. Wall Street doesn’t know. The American people don’t know. Worst of all the federal employees don’t know.

And that is no way to run a government.

[/RANT]