We begin today’s roundup with an excellent editorial at USA Today about the Trump administration’s “let them eat cake” moment:
Does anyone in the White House understand the meaning of the word "empathy"?
It's bad enough that 800,000 government workers, and a million or more federal contractors, are about to miss their second paycheck because of the five-week partial government shutdown.
It's even worse that some of them are being forced to stand in food lines, or choose between medicine and mortgage payments.
Now the affluent within Team Trump are admonishing these workers that their plight is really no big deal.
Here’s Michelle Goldberg’s take at The New York Times:
[I]n purely financial terms, Trump is as elitist as they come. Though he campaigned as a candidate of (white) workers, he has governed as a shameless oligarch. He has proudly surrounded himself with millionaires and billionaires, seeing their wealth as evidence of their worth. At a rally in 2017, speaking of his economic advisers, he said, “But in those particular positions, I just don’t want a poor person.” He has gone out of his way not to hire anyone who would actually understand the plight of the workers he’s holding hostage. [...]
Ordinarily, one might expect a presidential administration’s leading economic figures to understand something of these financial realities. But if they cared about people who aren’t rich, they wouldn’t be working for Trump in the first place. The shocking thing isn’t their indifference to the misery they’re causing. It’s that they can barely be bothered to hide it.
Philip Rucker, Josh Dawsey and Damian Paletta analyze the situation at The Washington Post:
As each week goes on, the shutdown’s impact becomes more acute. Close to half of the unpaid federal employees are required to continue coming to work. Those who are required to keep working cannot file for unemployment benefits, and many have said they cannot afford child care or commuting expenses while they aren’t being paid.
Trump has made no appearances at area food banks or other gathering places for furloughed workers, nor has he used the bully pulpit of his office to spotlight their basic struggles.
He also has rarely mentioned workers in recent meetings. In a Jan. 15 call with surrogates, he blamed Democrats for them not being paid and made no suggestions for helping them, according to audio obtained by The Washington Post.
Meanwhile, John Cassidy at The New Yorker writes about the shutdown:
The rabid support of his anti-immigrant base is what sustains him, and with Robert Mueller’s report looming it is arguably more critical to him than ever. But with every day that the shutdown continues Trump is becoming more unpopular in the country at large, and increasingly cut off from other elected Republicans who might otherwise be inclined to rescue him. Caught in a trap of his own making, it’s unclear who is left to offer him a way out. Sad!
On a final note, make sure to read this excellent analysis by Sheryl Gay Stolberg on how Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s strategy:
Mr. Trump has never before faced an adversary like Speaker Nancy Pelosi. [...] For a president who prides himself on being a master negotiator, Ms. Pelosi is a different kind of opponent, and one who so far has flummoxed him. [...] In this case, Ms. Pelosi is her own boss. And under the Constitution, she is a leader of a branch of government that is equal to the chief executive. [...]
Even so, some Republicans conceded that Ms. Pelosi had won this round.
“She stood her ground in the initial test,” said former Representative Tom Davis, a Republican who ran the party’s campaign committee. “I think she’s shown she’s an iron woman — and tough as nails.”
