It’s pretty funny that the Congressional leaders of the Democratic Party, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, were demanding a closed door meeting with President Donald Trump to discuss funding the border wall.

Trump, who according to the mainstream media is closed and secretive, kept the meeting open to the media despite Pelosi and Schumer’s on-camera demands that it be closed.

Pelosi and Schumer might want to think about what Trump was doing.  Trump wanted the Democrats on record as opposing “The Wall.”  Traveling around the country and hollering about the need for a wall was what got Trump elected president.  Trump is playing to his base, and he has also realized that his political instincts are far better than those of the Republican leadership.  Before the midterm election he was convinced by the Republican brain trust that he had to pull back on his demand for a wall or the Republicans could lose the House.  Trump pulled back and the Republicans lost the House anyway.  If the Democrats hadn’t gone overboard on their opposition to the nomination of Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh, the election could have been a bloodbath for Republicans.  The over-the-top opposition to Kavanaugh brought out enough of the Republican base for Republicans to add to their majority in the Senate.  But despite the fact that Trump listened to the Republican leadership, they lost the House.

For Trump, the election should have reinforced what he already knew – the Republican brain trust lacks a brain.  If left to their own devices they would have nominated Jeb Bush for president in 2016 and Hillary Clinton would have won in a landslide.

During the campaign Trump easily beat everything the Republican Party threw at him.  He beat the other 16 candidates and then, as they were winnowed down, he kept winning.  The people in the country most horrified by the idea of Trump being the Republican candidate were the Republican national leadership.

Republicans and Democrats alike were convinced that nominating Trump assured a victory for Hillary Clinton.  They were wrong.  Trump single handedly beat them all.

But Trump is not immune to the Washington disease, also called inside the Beltway-itus.  The 20th time you hear the same thing from a different person, it’s hard to continue to believe that they are all wrong, but often they are.

Trump was elected because he demanded a wall and border security.  Working class Americans don’t like the idea of millions of people pouring over the border illegally.  Trump knows this, Pelosi and Schumer don’t.

He also knows that shutting down the government has a big effect in Washington where virtually everyone works for the government even if they are not all government employees.

In most of the country you wouldn’t know the government had shut down if the mainstream media didn’t behave like it was the end of the world.  What it really amounts to is some government employees getting paid late, but since they didn’t have to go to work during the shut down, that seems fair.

If Trump doesn’t get funding for the wall he should allow the government to shut down.  It appears that’s the only way he’s going to get the wall funded and he promised the American people he’d build it.

 

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