P.A.T.H.E.T.I.C. Trump is stealing military funding—already appropriated by Congress for designated purposes—to build his border wall. He's stealing that money from states like North Carolina, and Kentucky, and, of course, Puerto Rico and Guam as well as Arizona, Colorado, New York, New Mexico, South Carolina, and Texas, too. It's a big list.
What's one thing a lot of these states have in common? Republican senators up for re-election in 2020, some of them exceedingly vulnerable. But what are all these Republicans doing about it? They're standing by their man. You wouldn't expect anything different from yappy Trump lap dog Lindsey Graham. The South Carolina Republican said, "I'm willing to divert funding for the wall. Since we couldn't get a legislative outcome we can deal with these projects later in the next budget cycle," Graham continued, "But I'm willing to divert the funding and absorb some pain to get the wall moving forward." You can hear the obsequiousness oozing out of him.
North Carolina's Thom Tillis, who wrote an op-ed in The Washington Post back in February to blast the emergency declaration Trump is using to justify this theft of defense funds, has been disciplined apparently, and is on board now, even though at the time he wrote the op-ed he "had less concerns with what we were doing here and more concerns with the precedent we would set for future precedents and I still stand by that." Whatever that means, the bottom line is he's sticking with Trump.
So is Martha McSally of Arizona, who is getting toastier all the time as we count down to 2020. And Texan John Cornyn, who never misses an opportunity to try to blame his troubles on the Democrats. "We wouldn’t be in this position if Democrats would just vote for border security funds but since they won’t do it then the president is exercising these extraordinary powers," he says. Of course Democrats have regularly voted for border security. Which is not the same as Trump's big, black, beautiful, and totally unnecessary boondoggle of a wall.
Coloradan Cory Gardner, who is up there with McSally as the likeliest to get the boot from constituents next year, echoed Cornyn's lie. "I haven't seen the resolution of disapproval, but I mean, the Democrats refuse to fund the border."
The resolution of which he speaks is the resolution of disapproval of Trump's emergency declaration Democrats are forcing. Federal law allows the Democrats to force a disapproval vote every six months. Their last push to overturn the emergency declaration netted 12 Republicans and passed, but not with a veto-proof majority. None of these vulnerable senators stood up to Trump the first time around.
They likely won't this time, either. So when the military families in their home states start experiencing the hardships caused by this diversion of funds, they'll know who to blame: Trump's enablers in the Senate.
Let's make it the end of this iteration of the GOP. Please give $1 to our nominee fund to help Democrats end McConnell's career as majority leader!