Russian asset Donald Trump's repeated threats to shut down the government over border wall funding—coming mere weeks after Trump said that Congress should stop wasting their time on immigration—is getting in the way of "Republican leaders' carefully scripted plan to avoid a politically disastrous government shutdown."
House Speaker Paul Ryan and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell have carefully negotiated a strategy that would avoid the most controversial elements derailing a short-term government funding bill this fall and making November's election even more problematic. That means putting off immigration and Trump's border wall funding until after the election. It probably wouldn't pass then, either, because nothing related to immigration can pass in the House with the Republican conference as it is. Maybe when a whole mess of them have lost to Democrats that will change, but for now and the foreseeable future it's just chaos, with Trump gleefully stirring the pot.
"If we don’t get border security after many, many years of talk within the United States, I would have no problem doing a shutdown," Trump reiterated Monday in front of a national cable TV audience, leaving McConnell and Ryan holding the bag. "I'm confident we can avoid a shutdown," was all McConnell had to say. One of McConnell's deputies, Senate Majority Whip John Thune, says it's a "negotiating tactic," but he's not too sure: "I hope it's a negotiating tactic." McConnell's No. 2, Texas Sen. John Cornyn, says that Trump "has privately agreed to put off a potential shutdown or any fight over border wall funding until after midterm elections."
Because Trump's private agreements are worth more than his public pronouncements? Because he won't tell them something different tomorrow? Because Trump is not both unstable enough and dumb enough to do it? Or maybe he's just crazy as a fox, as House Republicans want it to be, saying it's all just "posturing."
It might very well be.
Trump's lizard brain understands that the lizard brains of his base are activated by racism and that “the WALL” is the concrete manifestation of all their white supremacist fears and desires. Congressional Republicans understand that, too, and know that promising to fund the wall after the election is going to be a key to getting their base to the polls. But the chaos of all this shutdown talk before the election reinforces one thing that has become agonizingly clear in the past 18 months: Republicans aren't capable of governing without causing crises.
There's also this: Trump might be posturing, but that doesn't mean that the maniacs in the House won't use his words as an excuse to go ahead and do it. He's holding a lit match very close to the Freedom Caucus powder keg.