Pelosi Knows the Art of the Deal. Trump Just Talks About It. - Margaret Carlson

[DonViejo]

Don’t expect to hear any more careless cracks about his manhood.

Margaret Carlson
01.03.19 7:02 PM ET

Newly sworn-in Speaker Nancy Pelosi may have found a way to tame the savage beast that is Donald Trump. The mother of five knows not to negotiate with an unreasonable child.

“I am in the White House waiting for the Democrats to come on over and make a deal on Border Security,” Trump tweeted like the reality show host he was not long ago. Pelosi, on vacation with family in Hawaii, hung out a Do Not Disturb sign while the president was forced by the optics of the shutdown he named after himself to forego as much as a "working" round of golf with his sometime bro Sen. Lindsey Graham. They were reduced to lunch.

Two weeks is a long time to stew. The ball had hardly fallen in Times Square before Trump summoned the newly sworn in Speaker and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer to the White House for a “briefing” which differs from a meeting in that the format is a lecture not a dialogue. Having lost the last encounter with cameras rolling, Trump presided over this one in the electronics-free situation room so we may never know who said what to whom. In the driveway right after, Pelosi, speaking first, said the House would pass a bill that the Senate previously approved that would reopen the government and allow for a 30-day cooling-off period to negotiate border security. For its part, the White House reiterated its position that Pelosi’s offer is a “non-starter.”

Whatever. As Pelosi warned in the Oval Office weeks ago, she has the votes to pass her bill, and intends to do so. The upper chamber’s Republican leadership quickly did Trump’s bidding and announced they won’t take up the House bill. But individual members—Republican Senators Cory Gardner and Susan Collins have already broken with Trump—know enough to want the shutdown over. It’s a new day there after Trump’s acolytes dropped like flies in the midterms. Trump may not have absorbed the shellacking he took but Sen. Mitch McConnell has. That sound you hear is a back channel being dug between his office and Pelosi’s.

For the moment, there are more cracks in the Republican wall, figuratively and literally, than in Pelosi’s. The White House is busy defining Trump’s wall down: it’s slatted, it’s virtual, it’s drones, it’s already provided by Mother Nature’s impassable terrain. Mick Mulvaney, his acting chief of staff, budget director and pastry chef should the current one suddenly resign, once called shutdowns “childish.” Sen. Lamar Alexander, who usually sides with Trump, said "government shutdowns should be as off-limits to budget negotiations as chemical weapons are to warfare.” Vice President Mike Pence and Sen. Graham have floated modified proposals. Smart people want it to end.

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