bills, bills by destiny child. can you pay my bills. can you pay my telephone bills? do you pay my automobile bills? if you did then maybe we could chill. we can t chill. donald trump didn t pay his bills in business. he repeatedly stiffed people and passed the buck. he s famous for those headlines. trump s not paying the bill he promised mexico would pay and now he wants to pass the buck to the american taxpayer. there s not much debate left here. every time you think about this shutdown or talk to anyone about this shutdown or watch the new congress deal with it tomorrow. remember, we know trump broke his promise because he told us. we know he shut down the government to keep breaking that promise because he told us. we know trump is wrong right now in every day of this shutdown because he told us that too. we will have mexico pay for that wall. you know what, if i m wrong about this, you re going to all
yet this very clear logic has escaped all kinds of pundits and politicos because you may have heard this common claim that the shutdown that breaks trump s promise is actually trump s standing by his promise. his base is right. this is an essential promise he s made and the white house said this is an essential promise. i applaud the president for standing firm on a major campaign promise that he said that he would get the wall built. he s made clear this is a campaign promise. he s not going anywhere on it. he s not pander. it s what he believes in. it s what he ran on. it s not what he ran on. it s the total and complete violation of what he ran on which is mexico funding the wall. even as trump breaks his wall promise, he continues to blame he s putting america first by getting other countries to meet their obligations from boots on the ground to picking up the
so this is basically a political game of chicken because president trump is clearly calculating he will lose his core base supporters if he doesn t deliver on this wall promise. the democrats are calculating their fortunes are rising here and that they will lose, if they give the president a victory on this, that is not a formula for compromise. how is this resolved? that is the $64,000 question. and the president has i mean, in recent weeks, our reporting has showed that the president recognizes he will lose more leverage as soon as the democratic house takes control in january, which is why he was so dug in right now and he still is very much dug in. but the problem again with his level of support on capitol hill is that while he does have these ardent supporters, the vast majority of congressional members think a shutdown is a
as opposed to if the government stays shut down for several weeks, by the time 2020 comes around people will have forgotten about it and he feels like he didn t pay a price for the previous shutdowns anyway? i think that s the calculation. the blame gets spread around for the shutdown. maybe what is more surprising is that the president a week or so ago looked like he was ready to sign the clean funding bill that wouldn t include the wall funding before the conservative pundits intervened and started putting pressure on him and saying they would accuse you of abandoning his wall promise. i think there is a calculation on the president s part that the wall is part of his brand. if you remember just a few days into his presidency he was speaking to the president of mexico, a transcript of that was leaked and shows that the president understood that the wall was an essentially part of
what is the end game? you talked about steel slats, the penalty as well as i do, campaigned on a wall. steel slats, has to be an acknowledgment that it majority of the country doesn t want a wall. despite what sandra sanders may say on fox news or what the president may tweet out. in every conversation i have that have had, the consensus is that donald trump will have to fold on something. it may be an acknowledgment frankly, the logiftical impractical m. practicalities. it doesn t seem to be effective. perhaps it is an indication that president has that he broke his wall promise. that is gone. he promised, as you know, that