Of course, silly me 

Anyone read 'The Ugly American'? Had quite an impact on me in 1958.

It's ripe for a sequel...

Donald J. Trump @realDonaldTrump
Billions of dollars are sent to the State of California for Forest fires that, with proper Forest Management, would never happen. Unless they get their act together, which is unlikely, I have ordered FEMA to send no more money. It is a disgraceful situation in lives & money

Which probably has some bearing on Californians wanting to secede from the Union.

LOL. Trump'll want a wall along that border, too.

Something just occurred to me. If someone could find a windowless concrete room, and put Trump in that, he would have walls everywhere he looked. He could even invite his family in to join him. At last they could feel completely safe and secure, surrounded by a nice, high wall.

Rikkitic:

 

Something just occurred to me. If someone could find a windowless concrete room, and put Trump in that, he would have walls everywhere he looked. He could even invite his family in to join him. At last they could feel completely safe and secure, surrounded by a nice, high wall.

 

Hopefully that's where he is heading, anyway! It might have some steel bars, too, so he will get both building materials.

I found this little gem in the Washington Post, among comments on yesterday's "Presidential Address"

Trump conducted a mass loyalty poll last night using 8 minutes of free public and cable television delivery sandwiched in between a mass before-and-after email appeal to his donor base for a small amount of money.

 

Single issue, high profile, small donation, mass audience.

 

It may test the "my followers are so loyal I could shoot someone on 5th avenue" hypothesis.

 

Possibly Kellyanne Conway's idea. It was clever.

 

Thanks, Sideface. Here's the item in full:

President Trump has long said that keeping opponents off balance is the best way to win a negotiation. But nearly three weeks into a partial government shutdown, his usual playbook doesn’t seem to be working.

In his fight for a section of border wall, the president has dispatched aides to negotiate with lawmakers only to undercut their offers. He has declared a “crisis” at the U.S.-Mexico border but abruptly dropped a talking point about an influx of terrorists after it was proved false. And he has vacillated between threatening to declare a national emergency and professing to prefer a negotiated deal with Democrats.

On Wednesday, a day after delivering a prime-time Oval Office address to add gravitas to his public appeal, Trump abruptly walked out of a private meeting with lawmakers at the White House.

A “total waste of time,” Trump fumed on Twitter, lending credence to Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer’s accusations that the president is prone to “temper tantrums” when he doesn’t get his way.

Trump’s approach is a hallmark of a president who eschews strategic planning and preparation in favor of day-to-day tactical maneuvering and trusting his gut. But as he digs in against an emboldened Democratic opposition, Trump has found that his go-to arsenal of bluster, falsehoods, threats and theatrics has laid bare his shortcomings as a negotiator — preventing him from finding a way out of what may be the biggest political crisis of his presidency.

“Doesn’t the president do everything ad hoc? He’s a gut politician,” said Mark Krikorian, executive director of the Center for Immigration Studies, which advocates lower immigration levels. “He’s gotten out of boxes before, but this one is a zero-sum game. There are obvious resolutions on policy, but this is more of a political fight. Trump needs to say he got a win.”
Trump and Democrats spar over shutdown messaging, border wall

Yet what a win looks like, and how he intends to get there, remain cloudy.

Though Trump plans to visit a Border Patrol station in McAllen, Tex., on Thursday, he revealed his antipathy about the photo op, confiding to television news correspondents in a private lunch this week that he was going only because aides insisted he do so, according to the New York Times.

With a lack of clarity from the White House, anxious Republicans say they are unsure what Trump would accept to end the standoff, while skeptical Democrats express doubt that the president can be trusted to stick with any deal he makes.

“Democrats keep saying, ‘We don’t trust it until Trump will sign it,’ ” Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.) told reporters Wednesday about the negotiations on Capitol Hill. “That’s not an unreasonable request. .?.?. We won’t know until we put something in front of him.”

Sen. Richard J. Durbin (D-Ill.) pointed to a round of immigration negotiations with the White House a year ago. At more than one point, Democrats thought they had a deal with Trump to provide some wall funding in exchange for giving legal status to some undocumented immigrants — only to have him reject it in public.

“It has been frustrating,” Durbin said. “A year ago, we went through this on immigration reform. It did not end well.”

Meantime, public pressure is mounting on the White House.

Some moderate rank-and-file Republicans have signaled they would support reopening the government. A union representing Customs and Border Protection officers has sued the administration on behalf of federal workers who have not been paid. And news reports of airport delays, potential disruptions to food stamp assistance and a freeze on some government travel have prompted the administration to patch together temporary solutions.

Against that backdrop, Trump told reporters Wednesday that many of the 800,000 furloughed federal workers “are on my side.” In the end, he said, they would be paid and are “going to be happy.”

But in a sign that he has grown less confident of his standing, Trump insisted: “This is not a fight I wanted.” It was a remarkable assertion from a president who declared in a televised Oval Office meeting with Democratic leaders in mid-December that he would be “proud” to shut down the government for border security and would not blame them for it.

White House allies professed confusion over the president’s tactics. Trump aides initially signaled he would support a continuing resolution from Congress to fund the government through early February, but the president reversed course in the face of intense criticism from conservative talk show hosts and border hawks.

Since forcing a partial shutdown, the president has argued that a wall is necessary to block illegal drugs, even though the majority of contraband is smuggled through official U.S. ports of entry. He has said 4,000 terrorists were apprehended at the southern border, only to be challenged and proved wrong by reporters, including some from Fox News.

Trump has shifted his description of the wall to suggest the barrier will be made of steel slats to counter Democratic criticism of an “immoral” concrete behemoth and to comply with wishes from Border Patrol agents who prefer to be able to see activity across the border.

And he has simultaneously insisted that his hard-line immigration policies are working even while warning of a “crisis” of criminals and drugs “pouring into our country.”

“It’s fair to say that there’s been a variety of different asks and demands and statements by the administration, some of which have not always been accurate and some of which have been poorly received,” said David Inserra, a national security analyst at the conservative Heritage Foundation, which supports more restrictive immigration laws.

“The one place where you’ll find consistency has been their desire to say, ‘We want to stop illegal immigration,’ ” he added. “How do we stop it? Those arguments have been many and varied. To be fair, there are many arguments, but they seem to be searching for one to get some advantage in the political battle.”

In recent days, the White House has even shifted its messaging from focusing on national security concerns at the border to appealing to public empathy by describing the situation as a “humanitarian” emergency. A record number of migrant families with children, mostly from Central America, have been apprehended at the border over the past year, a problem that immigration advocates said has been exacerbated by the administration’s policies.

The Trump administration also has added new demands on top of the wall funding, including changes to immigration laws that would allow federal authorities to detain families for longer periods and speed up deportations by rolling back some due-process laws. These are moves that Democrats, and some Republicans, oppose.

For Republicans who have tried to stick with the mercurial president, the shifting goal posts have been frustrating. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) has said he will not allow a vote on any bill to reopen the government unless he receives assurances from the White House that Trump supports it.

“It’s always difficult,” said Sen. John Cornyn (R-Tex.), “when the person you’re negotiating with is someone who changes their mind.”

Now I think about, isn't this sort of chaos and disruption pretty much exactly what Trump wants?

In which case, he'll never move on this.

If I'm right, he'll appear to be quite happy and relaxed, enjoying the stalemate.

geekIT:

 

Now I think about, isn't this sort of chaos and disruption pretty much exactly what Trump wants?

 

In which case, he'll never move on this.

 

If I'm right, he'll appear to be quite happy and relaxed, enjoying the stalemate.

 

... until Mueller releases his report.

A beefed-up White House legal team prepares aggressive defense of Trump’s executive privilege as investigations loom large

January 9 at 6:44 PM

 

A beefed-up White House legal team is gearing up to prevent President Trump’s confidential discussions with top advisers from being disclosed to House Democratic investigators and revealed in the special counsel’s long-awaited report, setting the stage for a potential clash between the branches of government.

 

The strategy to strongly assert the president’s executive privilege on both fronts is being developed under newly arrived White House Counsel Pat Cipollone, who has hired 17 lawyers in recent weeks to help in the effort. ...

 

The Washington Post - Pelosi knows the magic word for beating Trump: ‘No’

January 10 at 10:15 AM

 

President Trump has always been able to bully, boast, deflect, pay off and lie to get his way. (It also helped to have a ton of his father’s money and ways to avoid paying taxes.)

Now someone has sufficient power and is immune to his bullying, unimpressed by his boasting, tenacious enough not to let him off the hook and indifferent to his fortune.

She’s smarter, tougher and far better at negotiating.

This in a nutshell is why Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) is running circles around Trump, who literally felt he had to flee when he couldn’t get her to capitulate.

 

The Washington Post - Trump loves a crisis, needs a crisis, has to have a crisis

January 10 at 9:47 AM

Whenever President Trump gets into a bind, usually of his own making, or just gets bored with watching his television, it’s time for a crisis.

When Trump bragged about how presidential he was going to be after the election, he apparently thought that meant acting hysterically, irrationally, dishonestly and perniciously to fabricate a crisis where none exists and then using it to grab extra powers to do as he pleased.

He confused the terms “presidential” and “tinpot dictator.”

 

The Washington Post - Trump visits Texas in effort to boost argument for border wall

Trump’s visit to the southern border is orchestrated to convey urgency about building a wall and comes as the president is weighing whether to declare a national emergency at the border ...

 

"I have the option,” Trump told reporters as he departed the White House en route to Texas.

 

“If this doesn’t work out, I’ll probably will do it, maybe definitely.”

 

That sounds so decisive and Presidential  ... 

Sideface:

 

The Washington Post - Trump visits Texas in effort to boost argument for border wall

 

Trump’s visit to the southern border is orchestrated to convey urgency about building a wall and comes as the president is weighing whether to declare a national emergency at the border ...

 

"I have the option,” Trump told reporters as he departed the White House en route to Texas.

 

“If this doesn’t work out, I’ll probably will do it, maybe definitely.”

 

 

That sounds so decisive and Presidential  ... 

 

Makes a lot of sense. He could negotiate with Pelosi, or maybe he can negotiate with Joe Average in a Texas St, near the border, that will get results for sure. He talked to 300 million on TV that didnt work, talked to Pelosi that didnt work, but have a chat with Joe in Texas, that will work