Donald Trump has been making successive headlines in recent weeks about his fascination with the idea of shutting down the GOP-led government ahead of the midterms over border wall funding. The latest comes from his Tuesday interview with the Daily Caller:
“I don’t like the idea of shutdowns,” Trump told the Daily Caller in an interview conducted on Tuesday. “I don’t see even myself or anybody else closing down the country right now.”
You might recognize that as the polar opposite sentiment of what Trump expressed just months ago in February. "Let's have a shutdown," he declared. "I'd love to see a shutdown if we don’t get this stuff taken care of," he added, referring more generally to immigration issues.
The point is, Trump's pronouncements on a shutdown on any given day have as much longevity as the breath he uses to emit them. Once they're enunciated, he's back to obsessing and there's frankly no telling what he'll decide. Here's a Bloomberg report published Wednesday that references conversations Trump has been having with his aides concurrently with his Daily Caller interview.
President Donald Trump is asking advisers whether it would be good politics to provoke an October government shutdown fight over money for his border wall, even though Republicans in Congress say a closure before the midterm elections in November would backfire.
The same article quotes the GOP's No. 3 Senator, John Thune, as saying "I believe" Trump and his aides are of like mind that shutting down the government is a bad idea. And the GOP's No. 2 Senator, John Cornyn, adds of avoiding a shutdown: "We're working hard on it."
Good god, Republicans are scrambling to contain Trump from doing the politically disastrous just weeks in advance of an election that will undoubtedly shape the rest of his presidency. That's how absurd the Republican party is right now, this is what they’re spending their energy on—containment of Trump inflicting absurd political harm on them. The rest of the country is on its own, sorry.
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