Donald Trump warned the members of Congress trying to avert another government shutdown that if they are not “discussing or contemplating a Wall or Physical Barrier, they are Wasting their time.” But if that’s Trump embracing the idea of another shutdown, it puts him at odds with congressional Republicans, who don't want another shutdown.
”I don’t like shutdowns. I don’t think they work for anybody, and I hope that they would be avoided,” said Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, pretending he doesn’t have much to do with avoiding shutdowns. “I’m for whatever works, which means avoiding a shutdown and avoiding the president feeling that he should declare a national emergency.” According to Ohio Sen. Rob Portman, “There is a building consensus on both sides of the aisle that shutdowns don’t make sense and that we ought to put legislative prohibitions in place to keep us from ever shutting down again.”
But against that, you have that implied threat from Trump: Don’t waste your time by doing anything other than giving me exactly what I want. And Democrats have experience of having tried to do deals with Trump only to find out that they’d wasted their time in the effort. That’s why Senate Minority Whip Dick Durbin is not going to try one more time to make a DACA deal with Trump: “I’ve tried to work with this administration on issues involving immigration with a great level of frustration. And I do not want to take so many innocent people whose fate is hanging in the balance of this political debate and start off with the premise that we have a likelihood of solving their problem.”
It’s on Republicans, not Democrats, to manage the temper tantrums coming from their man in the White House. Since Trump can’t be trusted to make a deal and stick with it, his people—Republicans—need to put the pressure on him to make it happen. And as much as Senate Republicans say they don’t want another shutdown—“There’s no appetite for government shutdowns and there is not much appetite for an emergency declaration for a lot of reasons,” said Majority Whip John Thune—they need to stop pretending it’s out of their hands.
