Trump ‘Looks For Landmines’ In Shutdown Deal, Says Maybe El Chapo Will Pay For Border Wall

Although it’s clear that Donald Trump has virtually no choice but to go ahead and support the border security deal hashed out by the bipartisan committee of lawmakers scrambling to avert another shutdown, the president seems intent on dragging things out.

The delay in getting a firm “yes” or “no” from the White House isn’t surprising. While Trump claims he needs more time to study what’s on offer, the bottom line is that he wants to make a show of holding out for another day or two in light of the fact that the deal only allocates $1.375 billion to border barriers. That’s nowhere near the $5.7 billion he wants. So, he needs to make it seem as though he’s willing to throw caution to the wind by shutting down the government again.

On Tuesday, he told reporters he’s “not happy” with the agreement, but later indicated he’d probably sign it anyway.

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It’s all about optics and true to form, he’s spent the last 36 hours laying the groundwork for a claim that the $1.375 billion represents a “down payment” that will then be paired with other funds cobbled together from various sources in the course of using executive powers to get something concrete built before the election (and you can take “concrete” figurative and literally there).

Although it’s not completely out of the question that he would refuse to sign the deal, it seems highly unlikely. Were he to shutter the government again, he’d doubtlessly make GOP enemies on Capitol Hill and the bad press would start to pile up again.

That brings us to comments delivered alongside Colombian President Iván Duque, who Trump welcomed to the White House on Wednesday. Here’s what he had to say about the shutdown:

As is customary, we’ll give you the transcribed version, because if there’s anything more amusing than hearing Trump, it’s reading Trump:

Well, we haven’t – uh – gotten it yet. We’ll be getting it. We’ll be looking for landmines ’cause you could have that, you know, it’s been known to happen before to people. But we have not gotten it yet, it’ll be sent to us at some point, and we’ll take a very serious look at it. We have a lot of things happening right now, we’re building a lotta wall right now, with money that we already have, and when people see what we’re doing I think they’ll be very surprised. We’re doing a lot of work and we have planned to do a lot of work.

I appreciate all the work the Republicans have done because they’re really going against a radical left – it’s a radical left and they’re going against it very hard. And we’re in very good shape. I don’t wanna see a shutdown. A shutdown would be a terrible thing. I think a point was made with the last shutdown. People realized how bad the border is, how unsafe the border is.

You can pick your own quotable, write your own jokes and choose your own dementia adventure there, but one of the things that stands out is how Trump talks about “the last shutdown” as though it’s something that happened several years ago as opposed to several weeks ago.

Additionally, there was in fact “a point made” in the last shutdown, but that point was certainly not that the border is unsafe. Rather, the “points” (plural) that “were made” are, in order: 1) Trump is even more irrational than everybody thought, 2) furloughed workers are not inclined to think about shutdowns as “vacations“, 3) Kraft Heinz is willing to hand out free mac & cheese to families who can’t afford to eat, 4) Wilbur Ross is hopelessly detached from reality.

Whatever. Trump is going to sign the deal. CNN reported as much on Wednesday morning, so everything he’s saying now is just for show, in keeping with the fact that he is, first and foremost, a showman, not a leader.

But Trump didn’t confine his press time with Duque to questions about the shutdown. He also talked about Venezuela, where people are starving to death (as opposed to just starving, like federal workers in the US last month). Here’s Trump:

Yes, if “you have the wrong government, bad things happen”. It’s hard to argue with that, and Trump is the world’s foremost expert on the consequences of bad government.

Finally, Trump called Ted Cruz’s silly “plan” to have El Chapo pay for the wall “very interesting” like “anything Ted does”.