It is bad when Mr. Bothsiderist Chuck Todd is spilling the beans on what Trump and Republicans are up to with the government shutdown and tonight’s Trump broadcast. No transcript on this, but Todd brought this up on his show and All In With Chris Hayes:
- Trump has no serious plan to reopen the government. Todd states the fact that the White House is going to have another briefing tomorrow at 3 P.M. on the government shutdown. If Trump was serious about reopening the government, he would do it TONIGHT. They would not need to wait until 3 P.M. tomorrow. Chuck Todd stressed this on his TV appearances.
- Tonight’s Oval Office address is to keep Congressional Republicans on the political reservation. Todd’s sources — and whatever you may think about Todd, he has plenty of access to Congressional Republicans — are about to “break” with Trump. This may be more real this time because we have cowards like Republican Senator John Kennedy urging Trump to declare a national emergency to get him and the other Republicans off the hook.
“We’ve just got four options here. The president can give in. Speaker Pelosi can give in. We could keep government shutdown, at least 25 percent of it. Or the president can pursue a legal approach. Now I don’t know which approach he’s going to pursue, but you can make a very persuasive case that we do have a national emergency on the border,” he said.
When TPM pointed out that the only option Kennedy had suggested that didn’t involve one side caving in was the emergency declaration, Kennedy agreed.
“If you take the first two options off the table, yeah. You’ve got one option here that I see to get government back open right now unless somebody gives in, and that is the declaration of a national emergency,” he said.
Oh God forbid that Trump gives in! And PLEASE do not make any Republicans senators defy Trump! Let’s have a Reichstag Fire instead!
Basically, I got to watch Todd trash Trump’s political “strategy” on the wall and the government shutdown. And for now, Todd didn’t reflexively trash Speaker Pelosi or the other Democrats. Todd may recover his equilibrium after tonight and piss all over the Democrats tomorrow, but he was all WTF? today.