Never a dull moment. Not even on a Friday night.
On Friday evening, Donald Trump appeared to suggest that he will declare a national emergency over the weekend in an effort to circumvent Congress and get started building his border wall.
“I will be making a major announcement concerning the Humanitarian Crisis on our Southern Border, and the Shutdown, tomorrow afternoon at 3 P.M., live from the White House”, the President tweeted.
Subsequently, CBS producer Arden Farhi said the President will not in fact use the address to make an emergency declaration, but will instead “present what he believes is a pathway out of the partial shutdown.” Farhi went on to say that it’s “unclear if Democrats have been consulted.”
This comes amid an increasingly contentious (and absurdly petty) public spat between Trump and Nancy Pelosi. One imagines Trump wasn’t amused by the fact that “President Pelosi” was at the top of the trending list on Twitter all day following BuzzFeed’s bombshell revelation that Robert Mueller has evidence that Trump instructed Michael Cohen to lie to Congress about Trump Tower Moscow (the special counsel’s office would later dispute the story – see tweet below).
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As detailed here extensively this week, it is by no means clear whether it’s advisable for Trump to declare a national emergency when there isn’t one. Contrary to what the President (and Lindsey Graham) would have you believe, there has to be a verifiable emergency for that kind of power grab to hold up in court. While the definition of “emergency” is open to interpretation and while Trump does in fact have a lot of leeway in terms of deciding what counts as an “emergency”, the White House would presumably have to provide evidence that reasonable people would accept as some semblance of convincing.
Additionally, rumors that Trump plans to raid disaster funds and divert the money to the wall suggest the President is about to take some extremely risky steps in the interest of healing his bruised ego and placating a base that he fears will become disillusioned if the wall is abandoned.
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Trump’s Shutdown Is Now Longest In US History — Are We ‘Great Again’ Yet?
On Friday morning, Trump delivered a series of characteristically bombastic broadsides that included the following insanely racist (and over-the-top ridiculous) remark designed to perpetuate the myth that Muslims are invading the country from Mexico:
Border rancher: “We’ve found prayer rugs out here. It’s unreal.” Washington Examiner People coming across the Southern Border from many countries, some of which would be a big surprise.
Yes, it would “be a big surprise” if we discovered that Islamic terrorists were migrating, en masse, to Honduras in order to join caravans and infiltrate the US from the south. The reason that would be such a “big surprise” is because it is so far-fetched that it wouldn’t even cut it as the plot of a B-movie.
For her part, Sarah Sanders wouldn’t confirm that a national emergency declaration is imminent, but she wouldn’t deny it either.
As if that wasn’t enough, Bloomberg reported on Friday evening that Trump is all set to issue an executive order restricting Chinese state-owned telecom companies from doing business in the US, citing (you guessed it) “national security.”
According to the article, Huawei and ZTE wouldn’t be mentioned by name and the ban wouldn’t be “outright”, but it could grant the Commerce Department sweeping authority to “review product and purchases” from enterprises with ties to “adversarial countries.”
You’re reminded that late last month, Reuters warned this might be coming. To wit, from a December 26 article:
President Donald Trump is considering an executive order in the new year to declare a national emergency that would bar U.S. companies from using telecommunications equipment made by China’s Huawei and ZTE, three sources familiar with the situation told Reuters.
Apparently, the worst case scenario here is a situation where Trump effectively cripples Huawei in what one China specialist described to Bloomberg as “a death sentence.”
This is of course part and parcel of the 5G deployment debate and it comes amid the ongoing, global Huawei saga that is a continual source of consternation for markets.
Finally, as if things needed to get any worse, Larry Kudlow said this on Friday evening when asked about how the government shutdown will affect the US economy:
When government business resumes the switch will turn and you will hardly even know it happened.
In other words, Kudlow says the economic recovery will be immediate.
Why is that possibly the most disconcerting news of all? Simple: because this is the same Larry Kudlow who said this on December 7, 2007:
There is no recession. Despite all the doom and gloom from the economic pessimistas, the resilient U.S economy continues moving ahead quarter after quarter, year after year defying dire forecasts and delivering positive growth. These guys are going to wind up with egg on their faces.
That, friends, was perhaps the worst economic call in recorded history.
(Bloomberg)
Oh, and then just to inject a little more drama, there’s this:
UPDATE: A spokesperson for the special counsel is disputing BuzzFeed News’ report. https://t.co/BEoMKiDypn pic.twitter.com/GWWfGtyhaE
— BuzzFeed News (@BuzzFeedNews) January 19, 2019
I believe term “hot mess” is applicable to all of the above. Now that I think about it that’s just one more description we can add to the list used to describe the President of the United States directly.
From the bleeding edge where inane discussion is the battlefield i can tell you the right wang base appears to be showing foundational cracks. Smug and fairly calm maga soldiers once content with speaking of a brighter future and burning snowflakes at the stake are increasingly becoming more volatile. On those days for example when the market shrieked downward, tends to brings out truly irrational topics like the prospect of a modern civil war. It is how they cope.
Did I mention that these are university graduates to a large degree, I have been in that online community for 15 years,. It is on those days that the evidence clearly indicates that trump is failing on his own lack of merit, that the hateful passion pours out of some of them. It is fear that causes them to crack up like that. Here is to hoping for more undeniably meritorious failures for Uncle Donnie so the crumbling may finally begin at the core.
I am exciting about the prospects for Trump University 2 opening soon (after being forced to….), anyway I need to take the class on how to avoid paying taxes using numerous shell companies, creating fake charities and 98 other tricks, that are shams but save you dollars.
And a question, Why don’t Trump hotels have McDonalds, Burger Kings and Wendys in them? MAGA with quality food.
Perhaps this is rumor, but I heard that Destructo’s upcoming meeting with Kim resulted from the former making lots of progress on talks with North Korea, for which we can thank a NATO member’s President, Recep Tayyip ErdoÄŸan. Recently, ErdoÄŸan suggested to Trump in a call that it was time for America to pull our troops out of South Korea because we’ve been there for more than 65 years, that the Korean War was long ago won by America and that he should be the first American President to declare victory and withdraw. Trump thought about it for 11 seconds and then imagined having a trifecta of withdrawals (ToW) under his belt. Trump immediately called Kim, shared his ToW strategy with a delighted Kim who uncontrollably started clapping and everything just fell into place. The upcoming meeting is set for Trump and Kim to negotiate parameters for the venue for three days of celebration 🾠🎊 🎉 and because Trump misses Kim.
So, I don’t get why Trump wants to withdraw from NATO. He gets some really good advice from its members.