Coming up next: Trump will improvise his way to an even bigger mess
by Tom Toles
President Trump never learns. Or at least he is beyond learning anything new. What he has learned irredeemably already is: Keep escalating. His humiliating climb-down from the shutdown is no doubt roiling around in that genius gut of his, and you know what the gut is going to say: Somebody needs to pay a price.
It’s like his wall, only bigger. Mexico wouldn’t pay. The U.S. taxpayers wouldn’t pay. So government employees and those who receive their services had to pay. And so they paid, though nothing was achieved and Trump still has no wall. Nor sense. So somebody else needs to pay now. Maybe everyone. Trump is not one to suffer alone.
So today he menaces the nation with dark warnings about MORE shutdown. About declaring a state of emergency.
The secret is out. Trump is no good at deals, and he is no good at legislative strategy, and he is no good at picking the best people, and he is no good at forming an honest, coherent sentence. He is no good at anything except drawing attention to himself through bragging and chaos.
Trump is contemplating declaring an emergency to beat the rest of the nation declaring one about him. He has created a landscape that is now such an unstable wreckage of his past decisions that we are left to hope for the least-worst outcome. Perhaps we will get lucky, and the American system of justice will impose a coherent sentence on him.
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OCU
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