I just can't see the Dems ever agreeing to the Wall, it would mean Trump wins and can do what he wants without worrying about Congress approval. I think McConnell is the one with the pressure point on him since he won't even allow a vote on things the Senate has already spproved 100-0.

Why?

And I think most people would be like, yeah, why are we having a State of the Union address when the government is shutdown? Probably Trump being on national TV a week ago spent any political capital he may have had in railing against this move against the State of the Union (you want to disrupt my TV shows TWICE in one month?!)

Yeah. I think that the real pressure here is McConnell weighing the fact that he's up for re-election in Kentucky on the one hand and GOP senators from moderate states wanting this to end on the other side.

Relatedly, which GOP politician since Reagan has done more for conservatism than McConnell? He kept Garland off the court. He kept Trump/Russia out of the news before the election. He kept his caucus united against Obama.

The fact that he has to worry about shoring up GOP support in Kentucky is insane to me. Who the fuck do Kentucky conservatives think they can get who will do better for them?

I can see this getting played up as "see the Dems are just against us, they don't want to get to norms, etc" and those same people ignoring what has happened for the past number of years by the Republicans.

Again, just a gut feeling, seeing how the Dems always seem to trip over themselves instead of just holding steady and not bringing "negative" attention onto themselves and off of Trump.

Betting on the Dems to step on a rake and lose the political upper hand is certainly consistent with recent history.

IMO, living here, he's in no danger, at all, sadly.

Exactly. Just seems like a move that they didn't need to make.

They can't cave for two reasons.

1. Something like 6% of Democrats want a wall. They'll either get primaried or lose support chunks of the 2018 that delivered the House will stay home and reelect Trump.

2. If they cave, Trump will do it again in the summer for the debt ceiling and for next year's budget.

Yup. You either send the message that this works, or that it does not work.

The only way I think that the Dems should "cave" on the wall is if the GOP gives up significant concessions in return. Like, for instance, DACA reform, changing the law to take shutdowns and debt ceiling fights off the table forever, and a significant COLA for federal workers and an elimination of the provision that allows a President to cancel the COLAs.

But the GOP isn't close to giving up even one thing on this list, so the Dems really just have to wait.

Yep my thoughts exactly-it'd be horrible to lose the first battle after people voted Dens to take control of the House.

Oh, and speaking of McConnell, there's a good chance that the Dem candidate in 2020 will be Matt Jones, who's a local sports radio guy and has an NFL bit on ESPN Radio. And he's a former co-worker of mine. So if he does run, it will be cool to have a guy I know running in a nationally discussed race.

MattJones4President?

:lol:

I'm all for a former AR QB star being President.

Didn't take us to the promised land but pretty exciting player.

Rudy Giuliani tonight said that he never said the campaign didn't collude with Russia, and that Trump only said that he, individually, didn't collude with Russia.

Glad that's cleared up.

Yup, no big deal.

Nice. I like it, somewhat Clintonian.

He also went onto say if Trump did collude with Russia it was a long time ago.

The Rudy backpedaling coincides with reports he's expecting the worst from the Mueller report.

Any time Rudy goes on TV he always admits something that makes it worse for Trump. Why does he still allow him to go on TV shows is beyond me.

Sent from my SM-G955U using Tapatalk

"My client might be a moron, a grifter, a colluder, a shyster, a con man and a jackass. But my client is no colluder." - Rudy Guilani

For folks who can get behind the pay wall, there's a WaPo article this morning that traces the goal post moving by TrumpCo on collusion since November 16.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/polit...=.86eb2fe39b1c

Schumer by himself would cave. Pelosi won’t. For all the legitimate issues brought up as points against her, she’s a great legislative leader. We haven’t heard a peep about even slight cracks in the Dem caucus.

There's a great Onion article where Schumer is saying that he's as surprised as anyone that he hasn't caved yet.

I'm noticing the Dems' messaging today has been more McConnell focused than Trump focused.

I think that's smart on their part. McConnell does not want the pressure, and this helps to try and direct it on him. Trump wants the attention, and this starves him of it.

There's an argument that the best way to get Trump to agree to sign a bill ending the shutdown is to make the shutdown boring for him (i.e. not about him).

For a guy that's as dirty politically as McConnell he's largely avoided pressure. It would be interesting to see how he'd respond to a little heat.

Definitely petty but agree with Pelosi not travelling overseas during the shutdown. She is needed for any negotiations and would presume face-to-face would be most effective.

Its not as much the what but the how he did it that I find fault with.

Yeah, I agree with that. Sitting here at the airport watching Wolf Blitzer pontificate like Trump personally called the Taliban and gave them Pelosi’s itinerary and just shaking my head. With all the genuine shit going on right now why the hell is this the news.

The comedy ensues as now Mnuchin's trip to Davos got called out and subsequently axed.

:lol:

I wrote McConnell, so I'm sure he's feeling the heat now.

Also, I'm fine with trump's gambit with Pelosi. When you're playing the game, you gotta expect that sometimes shit happens. It's not outside the bounds of the game, and you're better if you anticipate it.

If this buzzfeed story turns out to be true....

Nothing will change from the Republican side. Lol

Well at least we now know why Rudy was "changing the goalposts" on CNN last night:


Attention Required! | Cloudflare


I think if Mueller has enough evidence to indict Republican Congressmen/women over all this-or least a report of their activities, there's not going to be anything left to do but to surrender and impeach the President. It will be interesting to see if Cohen says anything along those lines given his position in the RNC,

It would be great if Cohen taped the conversation and/or other corroborating evidence ... (but doubtful)

Hayes Brown on Twitter: "This is, uh, a lot of evidence it sounds like

https://t.co/CBtAs9tQgc… "


Also:


Sen. Amy Klobuchar, two days ago: “You wrote... a president persuading a person to commit perjury would be obstruction. Is that right?”
William Barr: “Yes.”


https://twitter.com/kylegriffin1/sta...14743922905089

Should we expect tweets?

Ready for the darn Mueller report!

Democrats seize on report that Trump told Cohen to lie before Congress - POLITICO

Yeah, but unless he's on video holding a newspaper with a watch also clearly visible on it saying "I, Donald J. Trump, am instructing you, Michael Cohen, to illegally obstruct justice, which I am aware is a felony" we don't have enough to go on, right?

I don't think that would be enough for some people.

I follow a lot of media folks on twitter.

And they are all saying versions of "This is just Buzzfeed. It isn't sourced. There's credibility issues. We need to wait and see if this is true."

But, if it turns out to be false, all you will hear is how the media jumped on this story and uncritically believed it and is just out to get Trump.

Indeed (tin foil hat time), if I were buzzfeed and I wanted to help Trump, I'd put out a fake story about him telling Cohen to lie, then when it is found to be false and/or not provable, Trump gets to do his whole "fake news" "they're out to get me" bit.

Sure we should always wait and find out if something is true, but the Buzzfeed News section is a FAR FAR cry from the "Take this 5 minute quiz" buzzfeed section.


Buzzfeed News has broken a handful of major stories the past few years and Jason Leopold and Anthony Cormier have done some of the heaviest hitting on the Russia investigation of all media. I believe they broke the Steele dossier just off the top of my head.

That last paragraph at least hints that the Buzzfeed story is correct.

Also yesterday a story broke that Trump instructed aides to reroute disaster relief money away from Puerto Rico and towards Texas and Florida. That's going to get lost now, but it should be a major scandal in its own right.

I assumed if Trump lost there would be violence("rigged election!") Similarly, I think it's safe to assume that if Trump is removed from office, there will be violence ("Deep State! Fake News!")

Unlike past Presidents, this guy isn't going to shut up once he leaves office

It's kind of like investigating a child abuse situation while the child is currently living at the house where he's being abused. Except with many more victims.

Well once he leaves office, all those indictments that may be coming his way, will stick. And he (or Pence) can't pardon the ones coming from the state of NY. I don't think they let you Tweet from prison.

I think anything related to Russia from Cohen will be behind closed doors due to the Mueller investigation, but if Cohen can prove he has tapes from Trump directing him to go and handle things in Russia/try to get a meeting with Putin, its pretty much game over.

I'd like to think so, but the Trump/GOP 40% base has pretty much said that they consider the Dems a greater threat to the United States than hostile foreign powers.

I imagine that for a lot of them, it's bluster. But enough of them believe it to keep the game going for far too long.

Basically, the endgame for all this has been a slow march from "No crimes were committed" to "A Putin puppet is still better than Hillary would have been."

I'm feeling pessimistic today (being forced to work without pay so people can pretend that the shutdown isn't a big deal will do that to a person), so maybe take all that with a grain of salt. Maybe GOP supporters do have a line that they won't cross. I sure hope so.

First of all, sorry to hear you are one of those most affected by the shutdown. I hope that saner heads eventually prevail and get this shutdown over with. I certainly can understand why you are so pessimistic.



Some Republicans are already breaking from the President-look at the recent votes on the shutdown, and sanctions. Most of them voting with the Democrats are up for reelection in 2020, and more and more pressure will be put on them to keep doing so as more evidence comes out, and more polls showing lack of support for the President on this issue. They just saw the House flip mostly because of Trump, so the writing is on the wall for many of them. Meanwhile the Democrats are holding strong, even when Trump tries to break them up like when he invited moderate Dems to the White House to talk about the shutdown, and none of them took them up on it.



If/when the Mueller report comes out, its unlikely there will be anything about Democrats obstructing justice, election fraud, colluding with Russia, etc. And a lot of unknown stuff about people not even talked about yet. I think now we can see the light at the end of the tunnel, though it still may be a long tunnel

But like past presidents, no one is going to give a shit what he says after he leaves office