Standing before the cameras at his afternoon press conference on Tuesday, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer touted “a bit of good news, not just for Democrats but for the country, that the president is easing off his demands for a [Mexico] border wall in the government funding bill.”
“Now, we Democrats have been opposed to including the wall in this bill since the beginning of the negotiations,” Schumer said. “There’s no plan to make Mexico pay for it, as the president promised it would. There’s no plan to resolve the eminent domain issues on the border. And the money is better used elsewhere; if the wall is $50 billion dollars, you could use that money to give just about every American broadband.”
As The New Republic’s Alex Shephard wrote Tuesday morning, Trump’s insistence that Congress pass a spending bill with border wall funding was ludicrous negotiating—“an absolute non-starter for Democrats and even some Republicans.” But Trump was bluffing. Now he’s backing down to avoid a highly symbolic government shutdown on his 100th day in office.
Liberals aren’t the only ones reaching this conclusion. “I’m not happy to have to pass this on,” Rush Limbaugh told his audience on Tuesday. “I’m very, very troubled to have to pass this on. And I want to say at the outset that I hope my interpretation is wrong, and I hope this is not the case. But it looks like, from here, right here, right now, it looks like President Trump is caving on his demand for a measly $1 billion in the budget for his wall on the border with Mexico.” Limbaugh added that “Democrats seem to have successfully used this stupid, silly threat of a government shutdown to get their way.”
This is an unearned victory for Democrats. All they had to do was stand aside and let Trump overplay his hand. But Schumer knows that Democrats must take what they can get, and run with it.