Trump lost. Period.



By Jennifer Rubin
Opinion writer
January 25 at 3:04 PM

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2019/01/25/president-trump-lost-period/

Things continue until they don’t. The senseless, cruel government shutdown ended on Friday. Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) had vowed she would not give anything until the government reopened. President Trump had promised he wouldn’t reopen the government without funding for his border wall. Now, Pelosi is getting what she wants. Trump has lost. The deal would reopen the government for three weeks to allow a conference committee to discuss border security measures — but not a wall.

Trump said in the Rose Garden that he was “proud” to announce that a deal had been reached, though it was nothing more than a capitulation. The president agreed to reopen the government for three weeks, making a vague (and now, more than ever, empty) threat to declare an emergency if money for the wall was not included in negotiations. He then launched into a harangue of the type that has not in many of his speeches shifted public opinion. "We really have no choice but to build a powerful wall or steel barrier,” Trump insisted. He rambled on, reciting yet again some story about women smuggled in cars with their mouths taped shuts. (His own advisers and border agents have no idea what he is referring to.) His mini-tirade about the wall reminded anyone who cared that he is not getting it.

You cannot get thumped any worse than Trump did on this encounter with Pelosi. Each step along the way, the president stumbled. He told Pelosi and Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) “I will be the one to shut it down.” He’d be proud to do it! He wouldn’t blame them! He was then ready to sign a clean continuing resolution — until he listed to Ann Coulter and Rush Limbaugh and provoked a shutdown anyway.

In the iconic video from December, Schumer can barely contain his laughter. Inside, surely he was jumping up and down, delighting in Trump’s political malpractice.