Real national emergency may be a servile GOP

FBI worried. Turkey threats. Secret meetings, missing transcripts. Racism gestures. Removing sanctions. William Barr. A weekly columnist must cull the heard. So here’s but unum e pluribus:

If that meeting between Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer, and Trump was as described, one wishes the speaker had replied differently to Individual-1. It’s reported he asked whether, if he reopened the government, Speaker Pelosi would fund his wall. No, was her answer.

If she’d said, “Donald, I haven’t read ‘Art of the Deal,’ because I don’t have time for fiction. But I doubt it recommends laying down your cards at the start of negotiations,” would he have still made a show of walking out? Probably.

Ever unreliable, Trump had agreed, only days earlier, to sign funding legislation without the wall. Then came marching orders from Fox “news” and that was, and still is, that. Did Putin pipe a tune, too? Our chaos is his fortune. Also, Trump had promised to accept “the mantle” and not blame Democrats. Trump’s promises: good as fools’ gold. By a margin of nearly 2 to 1, though, Americans blame Trump and Republicans for the shutdown.

Pelosi is Trump’s perfect antagonist: a smart, savvy, tough woman, unfazed by his fact-free bullying. Neither wants to cave to the other: Trump, because he knows it’d reveal his tough-guy fakery; Pelosi because she knows she can expose his tough-guy fakery. She’s playing chess to his tic-tac-toe, leaving him only one way to avoid humiliation: declaring a national emergency. Checkmate.

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