A Temporary Suspension of Murc’s Law!
By 
I know you won’t believe this, but we have reports that Republicans made choices, that have consequences:
“Democrats are far more concerned with Illegal Immigrants than they are with our great Military or Safety at our dangerous Southern Border,” the president said on Twitter. “They could have easily made a deal but decided to play Shutdown politics instead. #WeNeedMoreRepublicansIn18 in order to power through mess!”
In fact, it was Mr. Trump who opted not to pursue a potential deal that he and Senator Chuck Schumer of New York, the top Senate Democrat, had hashed out over lunch at the White House on Friday. The proposal would have kept the government open, funded a border wall and extended legal status to undocumented immigrants brought to the United States as children, while including disaster aid funds and money for a federal children’s health insurance program. Mr. Kelly later called Mr. Schumer to say the agreement lacked sufficient immigration restrictions.
While Mr. Schumer said shortly after the government shut down that “in my heart, I thought we might have a deal tonight,” White House officials argued that he had drastically overstated the progress made during the lunch.
On Saturday, though, Mr. Schumer said that even members of the president’s party had by now recognized that Mr. Trump was ill equipped to strike a political compromise.
Rob likes to describe trying to argue with a particular kind of passive-aggressive troll as “arguing with Jello.” (Defenders of consumerist wank voting trying to evade the reality that elections are zero-sum games that a major-party candidate will win are the ultimate example, but far from the only one.) This is indeed what it’s like to negotiate with Trump. And not just Trump — as we’ve seen before, Trump’s comprehensive ignorance and impulsiveness wouldn’t be an issue if the Republican conference had any idea what it wanted to do.