Michael Cohen becoming the country's hero by ending this nightmare would be incredible.

nice try bro.. the world is only like 4000 years old...


eta- 6000 yrs.. or whatever those crockpots believe

I can do it in 4 words:

"I changed my mind." Wowee

If they end up fully building a wall, it will be Mexico that gets the benefit of it as many Americans try to escape to the more prosperous side.

Again, don't normalize Trump, fight him. Where there is evil, evil should be fought. That's the best way to reach the 65% of people who don't follow politics and don't know much about current affairs. The conservative message gets boosted significantly by grifters and should be drowned out. Trump is not a successful businessman, he's a criminal clown.

At least the Post is willing to fight evil.

Meanwhile in Ohio:

Look at what the core possee is now. These are all total hacks, PR people (Conway, Shine, SHS, and one other), Miller (the policy genius who writes like an uninformed and insincere HS junior), and family. All the other rats have left the ship and the only remaining fuel is desperation, adderal, and dwindling money from racist olds.

not pictured: Hannity [who said he would quit if Fox fired Shine]

This crew could not run a fast food restaurant, much less the US government.

Is there really much of his story that we don’t know yet if Mueller is letting him tell it?

The

Trump now saying “I obviously didn’t mean it” about Mexico paying for the wall.

Trump isn't asking for 700 miles of fencing. He's asking for 2000 miles of wall. That is what he campaigned on, that's what his base voted for. Although, since there is no comprehensive plan for this wall it could be anything. Trump is shutting down the government because he can't get a blank check to do something something something at the border. And you support that?

I for one is interested in everything T done while with Cohen for his 10 years of suspected criminal activity.... 😂😂😂

This has to be the biggest show on earth in 2019 👍 The biggest I tell ye. 🙏 T 🙏

Sure, I was just saying that both sides are totally uncoupled from any actual policy arguments at this point. Whether 5 billion for some kind of border barrier is funded or not is simply not consequential as a matter of public policy. It is obviously an extremely dumb thing to shut the government down for 3 weeks over, but then the flip side is that it's also dumb to not spend 5 billion on a wall/fence/whatever so the government can open. The actual public policy of 5 billion for a wall happening or not happening is simply not consequential enough to justify a 3 week shutdown either way.

It is only consequential as a political matter: Trump getting something he can sell as a Big Beautiful Wall or Democrats denying Trump getting that win. And Democrats trying to sell the public policy of not appropriating 5 billion for a wall as actually crucially important in and of itself is pretty much nonsense.

Right but the 5 billion Trump is actually asking for is much closer to the former than it is to the latter

It’s not a blank check, it’s 5.7b, not all of which goes to a wall. And even if it were all for the wall, it wouldn’t get far on a wall that would cost 25-35b to build. This isn’t about a wall. Trump doesn’t want one, and the Dems won’t give him one. It’s about winning and political gamesmanship.

Ask yourself this: if there is *one* thing that Trump has enough experience in to not be completely clueless (even if only because of those around him) it’s construction. A construction project requires plans, and blueprints, and cost analyses, and anything of this size would require a boatload. If they had anything like that they would be touting them left and right to grift supporters. But they haven’t, and they don’t. Trump doesn’t want a wall. But he has to fight for one because it was a campaign promise. If he wins, he “gets things done”—but this is just a start and he needs more support so he can finish what he started. If he loses, well then hopefully his tireless efforts can energize the base to vote for more “true” Republicans next time so they can pass it after he wins in 2020.

All the while Trump gives his cronies get the contracting jobs and he builds his grift capital by giving the deplorables a “victory”

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi says President Trump doesn't understand financial insecurity that federal workers face during the shutdown: "He thinks maybe they could just ask their father for more money. But they can’t.”

That’s good.

Can we stop this ****? It's a ****ing wall he wants, 30+feet high. The only picture we have of it is that it's made out of 30'+ metal slats with pointy tops.

Again, it does matter because what Trump is actually asking for is anti-American enough to be worth shutting the government down for.

This is entirely about the wall. And if the Dems give him enough money to start it they are going to be on the hook to keep giving him money to finish it. It's not political gamesmanship, it's a moron mashing buttons and throwing fits.

How high can the fence be before the fence is anti-American?

dom with the 2-3 days pony there

He’s a moron but he’s not mashing buttons—if he were acting randomly he wouldn’t have had the finger on the pulse of racist America well enough to be elected.

He is a career grifter that has been listening to Fox News for 6 years straight, absorbing the propaganda they are feeding the deplorables. While he almost certainly believes it to be true as well, he also knows that the one thing he can’t compromise on to maintain his base is racism against brown people. He would be doing this even if he realized it was dumb because this is what his deplorable base wants.

I live in Trey Gowdy’s former district, trust me, most of my neighbors are loving him. My racist coworker that had stopped posting politically since the election has made about a dozen Facebook posts today trying to rally the energy of the deplorable friends of his.

Jesus. Even the fox news host is like 'ok grandpa' half way through his rambling.

Unfortunately, you are operating on one of the even-numbered levels and getting the wrong answer, when being either a level up or a level down would work just fine. Sure the wall doesn't matter in a practical sense, but the practical consequences of a shutdown don't really matter to Democratic decisionmakers either, as long as the voters blame them on Trump. So, why give Trump a political victory (the wall) in exchange for bailing him out of an ongoing political trainwreck (the shutdown).

Obviously, they aren't going to message it that way, they're going to say they oppose the wall (true!) and think Trump should reopen the government and negotiate in a normal way for his priorities rather than using bullying and hostage-taking to get his way (also true!), because those things sound better to the voters.

EDIT: To put it more concisely, you may be right that both sides are unmoored from policy arguments, but the GOP is also unmoored from the political argument too.