Donald Trump unveiled his great plan today — temporary protection for “dreamers” and other immigrants in return for $5.7 billion worth of wall — but House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has already said it falls short and some on his side don’t like it either
Of course he doesn’t propose that Mexico pay for his wall.
Trump expressed little concern for the hundreds of thousands stressed by cutoff paychecks and government services. Reopening government should be the first order of business.
The Democrats in the House will again pass a group of spending bills previously endorsed by Senate Republicans to operate government, while separating border security issues. Sen. Mitch McConnell, ceding congressional authority to Trump, has been refusing to consider such measures even though the Republican majority has approved them before.
Hard-core right-wingers don’t like even temporary protection for immigrants. They call it amnesty, though Trump offers no path to legal status. Trump, as one put it, is offering a hostage-release demand to the child in government custody. Give him his wall and he’ll set them free — for a bit. For comic relief from one of the Trump influencers:
Trump proposes amnesty. We voted for Trump and got Jeb!
— Ann Coulter (@AnnCoulter) January 19, 2019
David Frum has written for The Atlantic:
This idea is even more harebrained than the last, if that is even possible. Instead of appealing in prime time to the whole nation, Trump on Saturday afternoon advanced a detailed set of proposals intended to shift a critical mass of backbench Democrats to break with their leadership and deal directly with him. You don’t need to do much more than articulate the idea out loud to appreciate its utter unrealism.
The Democratic majority is newly elected and highly cohesive. Why on earth would any appreciable number of Democrats break away from their leadership to do business as individuals with a president none of them trusts about an issue none of them thinks should be negotiable, reopening the government? They will not do it, and it should have been obviously predictable from the start that they would not do it. Trump could not even get moderate Democrats to come have lunch with him at the White House this week. How could he imagine that a TV talk would entice them to break ranks and destroy their own political future within their party?