If I was a Republican strategist, I'd want Dems to make this offer publicly so we could table a fake M4A bill with some huge poison pill that dumb people won't understand. Then I send out the talking points memo and do a full-court press on them reneging on their own offer. Because idiots will absolutely fall for it.

I'm fine with offering something like citizenship for dreamers or Medicare for all. Preferably do it in front of cameras so McConnell and trumps handlers don't get a chance to steer him ahead of time. Trump might at least entertain the idea and freak the right out and get them infighting.

I think it is logically impossible for Trump to sincerely offer anything in the immigration arena that the Dems would agree to in exchange for money for a Wall. And by "sincere" I mean no chance of subsequent dilution/reversal via executive or judicial malfeasance.

This is a person and party whose raison d'etre is the demonization of brown people. They separate families at the border and put the children in cages. They empty water bottles placed in the desert. Two children have died. They hate Dreamers with a passion beyond my comprehension.

How can any compromise with these people be reached? Who would want to compromise with these people?

Ya like he owned them in the midterms right?

Yeah. I'm in the camp of people who think a deal could be done if enough was conceded, but there's no way Dems should counteroffer here, they should just enumerate the things which are unacceptable about this offer and leave it at that. Don't do their work for them. The shutdown is hurting people, but it's long past time to play hardball, and this is not working out well politically for either Trump or the GOP.

lol this ****ing moron

Like the problem with counteroffering imo is that it feeds into the impression that the opposition to the wall is playing politics. Dems need to be seen to be standing on principle, even if ultimately there are deals they would accept.

Count me in with the folks saying there should simply be a democrat rejection-- making any deal of any kind is showing that this tactic, govt shutdown/hostage situation, is a valid way to get what you want.

The answer must always be no to anything Trump offers UNTIL the govt is running again.

Then negotiations can happen. But this shutdown tactic has to yield nothing or it becomes another tool to use in the future.

Yea this is probably how it would go.

Last few posts are exactly right.

Also, remember: Trump doesn't know anything about policy. He takes all of his cues from Fox and congressional republicans. I think there's close to a 0% chance he would negotiate directly with the democrats. More likely, if Pelosi comes to him with an offer, Trump will bring the offer to McConnell or Ann Coulter or whoever, and they will say lolno and that will be the end of it. Democrats aren't going to pull a fast one here and take advantage of Trump with a lopsided deal. I would be absolutely shocked if that happened.

Here's an fair offer : you can have the wall if you pay for it out of your own pocket and then only after you cut your balls off first and present them to Pelosi on silver platter.

It doesn't have to yield nothing. It just has to yield obviously less than it cost in political capital.

Several interesting tidbits in this article about how things went down with the Buzzfeed story: https://www.washingtonpost.com/world...28d_story.html

This gets to the heart of why it's hard to see Republicans offering something that the Democrats would accept.

Anything that adds a huge number of voters that will skew Democratic is likely to be a non-starter for Republicans. And that sort of offer (i.e., an offer that pays long term benefits for Democrats) is probably what it would take for Democrats to agree to fund the wall.

Right, and it also abandons the implication that Trump and Republicans are responsible for the shutdown. It's just not a good look to say anything other than, "open the government and stop hurting people so we can figure this out. Also we're not wasting hard earned tax dollars on a stupid immoral wall, ever". Then play the "I'm proud to shut down the government" tape on a loop. Easy game when your opponent is senile and dealing with multiple investigations

Assuming the Dems current offer is 100 and the Republicans original offer was 0 with the new offer being a 1.
The problem with counter offering will be that the Republicans will just decline and call it ridiculous before countering with a 1.1. Then the Dems will move their offer from a 100 to a 50 and then the Repubs move it to a 1.2 and eventually they compromise at a 2.

This is true. Sounds obvious but the Republican had two years to pass a wall and they didn't.

He mentions later that there's nothing Republicans can offer that won't fracture their coalition. Amnesty or a pass to citizenship will kill his base support so that only leaves non immigration bargaining chips that probably will run into opposition from other parts of the Republican base.

With public opinion blaming Trump the most Democrats should go for the jugular or let Trump twist in the wind.

Yeah, like as Hue points out above, the GOP can't really offer more without pissing off a chunk of their base. The Dems just saying "This offer is unacceptable for reasons A, B, C and D, do better" puts them in an impossible position. If the Dems were to counteroffer, it would provide the GOP with something to attack. When your opponents are marioparty.gifing themselves, just go small-target.

"Republicans," as in GOP congresscritters, may not as a whole consider the wall important (note: it is certain that some of them do, but it is obvious that the Senate and House GOP leadership does not). But Trump considers it vitally important, so he might offer them something valuable, and the Dems should ask and accept. Fracturing the GOP base is a win.

The reality is that as long as Stephen Miller is involved there won’t ever be an acceptable offer. Didn’t he kill the first permanent DACA for wall deal?

This is also true, but the Dems should try to get a negotiation going with Trump alone and with a press conference pending and without time for Trump to go to his team before going to the press. It's not terribly likely they can angle this, but it's way more likely with Trump than with reasonable presidents.

I also agree that the Dems putting a counteroffer out there publicly is bad strategy. Trump would see the reaction to conservatives on TV.

Inside the Mueller team’s decision to dispute BuzzFeed’s explosive story on Trump and Cohen

The reporter informed Mueller’s spokesman, Peter Carr, that he and a colleague had “a story coming stating that Michael Cohen was directed by President Trump himself to lie to Congress about his negotiations related to the Trump Moscow project,” according to copies of their emails provided by a BuzzFeed spokesman. Importantly, the reporter made no reference to the special counsel’s office specifically or evidence that Mueller’s investigators had uncovered.

“We’ll decline to comment,” Carr responded, a familiar refrain for those in the media who cover Mueller’s work.

The innocuous exchange belied the chaos it would produce. When BuzzFeed published the story hours later, it far exceeded Carr’s initial impression, people familiar with the matter said, in that the reporting alleged that Cohen, Trump’s former lawyer and self-described fixer, “told the special counsel that after the election, the president personally instructed him to lie,” and that Mueller’s office learned of the directive “through interviews with multiple witnesses from the Trump Organization and internal company emails, text messages, and a cache of other documents.”

In the view of the special counsel’s office, that was wrong, two people familiar with the matter said, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal deliberations. And with Democrats raising the specter of investigation and impeachment, Mueller’s team started discussing a step they had never before taken: publicly disputing reporting on evidence in their ongoing investigation.

...

People familiar with the matter said Carr told others in the government that he would have more vigorously discouraged the reporters from proceeding with the story had he known it would allege Cohen had told the special counsel Trump directed him to lie — or that the special counsel was said to have learned this through interviews with Trump Organization witnesses, as well as internal company emails and text messages.

Carr declined to comment for this story beyond the special counsel’s office statement issued Friday.

After Carr declined to comment to BuzzFeed, but before the story was published, he sent reporter Jason Leopold a partial transcript of Cohen’s plea hearing, in which Cohen admitted lying to Congress about the timing of discussions related to a possible Trump Tower project in Moscow, according to the emails BuzzFeed’s spokesman provided. Cohen had claimed falsely that the company’s effort to build the tower ended in January 2016, when in fact discussions continued through June of that year, as Trump was clinching the Republican nomination for president.

“I made these misstatements to be consistent with Individual 1’s political messaging and out of loyalty to Individual 1,” Cohen said at his plea hearing late last year, using the term “Individual 1” to refer to Trump.

Carr, people familiar with the matter said, hoped Leopold would notice that Cohen had not said during the hearing that Trump had explicitly directed him to lie. But Leopold, who co-authored the story with reporter Anthony Cormier, told the spokesman he was not taking any signals, and Carr acknowledged the point.

“I am not reading into what you sent and have interpreted it as an FYI,” Leopold wrote.

“Correct, just an FYI,” Carr responded.

...

While neither Cohen nor his representatives had ever said explicitly that Trump directed Cohen to lie to Congress, Guy Petrillo, Cohen’s attorney, wrote in a memo in advance of his sentencing, “We address the campaign finance and false statements allegations together because both arose from Michael’s fierce loyalty to Client-1. In each case, the conduct was intended to benefit Client-1, in accordance with Client-1’s directives.”

Client-1 refers to Trump. Petrillo declined to comment Saturday. It is unclear precisely what “directives” Petrillo was referring to, though he did not allege elsewhere in the memo that Trump explicitly instructed Cohen to lie to Congress. He wrote that Cohen was “in close and regular contact with White House-based staff and legal counsel to Client-1” as he prepared his testimony and “specifically knew . . . that Client-1 and his public spokespersons were seeking to portray contact with Russian representatives in any form by Client-1, the Campaign or the Trump Organization as having effectively terminated before the Iowa caucuses of February 1, 2016.”

People familiar with the matter said after BuzzFeed published its story — which was attributed to “two federal law enforcement officials involved in an investigation of the matter” — the special counsel’s office reviewed evidence to determine if there were any documents or witness interviews like those described, reaching out to those they thought might have a stake in the case.

They found none, these people said. That, the people said, is in part why it took Mueller’s office nearly a day to dispute the story publicly.

...

Two people familiar with the matter said lawyers at the special counsel’s office discussed the statement internally, rather than conferring with Justice Department leaders, for much of the day. In the advanced stages of those talks, the deputy attorney general’s office called to inquire if the special counsel planned any kind of response, and was informed a statement was being prepared, the people said.

Around 7:30 p.m. Friday, Carr distributed it to numerous media outlets via email.

...

People familiar with the matter said the special counsel’s office meant the statement to be a denial of the central theses of the BuzzFeed story — particularly those that referenced what Cohen had told the special counsel, and what evidence the special counsel had gathered.

Hate to be a scold, but this mode of reporting where we have blockbuster stories based entirely off of anonymous sources is bad and we need to move away from it.

Well to be fair our explosive stories are coming from ridic sites like buzzfeed.