FYI.

This story is over 5 years old.

News

Trump's border wall meltdown is freaking out Republicans: "It's a mess"

“What members are concerned about – particularly members from red districts – is, are they going to be blamed for this?"
Trump's border wall meltdown is freaking out Republicans: "It's a mess"

Donald Trump hates losing. But after suffering a historic election loss to House Democrats last month, he’s now afraid of losing $5 billion for his long-promised wall forever. So on Friday, Trump threatened to shut down the government “for a very long time” to get it.

Still, even members of his own party see Trump’s refusal to sign the funding bill the Senate unanimously passed Wednesday night as a manufactured crisis of his own making. By Thursday night, that legislation with the cash for the wall was on its way to an empty Senate chamber, as Majority Leader Mitch McConnell scrambled to get senators back to Washington to vote on a bill that's essentially dead on arrival.

Advertisement

“It’s a mess,” outgoing Rep. Mike Coffman (R-Colo.) vented to VICE News. Coffman has been in Washington since 2008 and has witnessed government shutdowns under divided government but not one where the White House and both chambers of Congress are held by the same party.

“This feels different, of course – being a Republican with a Republican president,” he said. “But this president can be all over the map.”

Earlier this year Coffman opposed the sweeping spending bill his party struggled to pass to avoid a shutdown, but he vividly remembers getting lobbied to support it by his fellow House Republicans. They tried to sway him by arguing the president would have the back of anyone who supported it. That didn’t happen.

Instead, the president took to Twitter and threatened to veto the measure before he relented and signed it. Then he delivered a speech where he unleashed on the $1.3 trillion bill and vowed to “never sign another bill like this again," effectively painting the many Republicans who voted to avert that potential shutdown as sellouts to their conservative backers.

“What members are concerned about – particularly members from red districts – is, are they going to be blamed for this?”

“He essentially threw everybody under the bus,” Coffman said, before connecting that episode to this week’s impasse. “What members are concerned about – particularly members from red districts – is, are they going to be blamed for this and is the White House going to throw them under the bus?”

Advertisement

In Trump’s Washington, no one seems to know when a Trump-sized bus will sideswipe them.

Back to Washington

Just Wednesday night, a group of Senate Democrats burst into Christmas carols on the Senate floor as many could taste their long-awaited winter break with their families just a plane ride away, but the “break” was short-lived.

With House hard-liners having convinced Trump to fight for his wall, the Senate has now been alerted that votes are expected Friday. After landing an ocean away and getting 17 minutes in with his wife and kids, Sen. Brian Schatz (D-Hawaii) had to hop another flight back to Washington.

This time they have no idea how long the work will take, and there still doesn’t seem to be a game plan from the White House or Republican leaders, who are frantically trying to placate the far-right wing of the party.

Read: The president is a terrible political dealmaker. This week proved it.

This is usually the season when pressure from spouses, kids, grandkids and other loved ones eases lawmakers into a mood where compromises become easier. That’s not the mood this year, and it means some lawmakers have had to tell their families back home to start the holiday weekend without them.

“I’ll just plan on telling the wife to plan on taking the kids back by herself,” Rep. Scott DesJarlais (R-Tenn.) told reporters just off the House floor Thursday afternoon, showing some frustration. “I think people really don’t understand what’s happening.”

Advertisement

That includes Rep. Greg Walden (R-Ore.), who chairs the powerful Energy and Commerce Committee. Walden usually has a seat at the leadership table, he wasn’t alone in being locked out of this round of last-minute politicking.

After the conservative wing of the GOP threw the week into disarray, the more moderate wing of the GOP – dubbed the Tuesday Group – huddled in a room underneath the House floor and collectively scratched their heads.

“We’re trying to figure out where the president is. We’re literally trying to figure that out.”

“We’re trying to figure out where the president is,” Walden told VICE News. “We’re literally trying to figure that out.”

Just last week in the Oval Office Trump told Democratic leaders he would personally own any government shutdown, but he took it back Friday by tweet.

That’s only made Democrats bind together more tightly in their opposition to wall funding, and it also seems to have emboldened the small group of tea party-tinged Republicans the president trusts because he sees them parade across cable news on an almost daily basis. And they’re telling Trump a shutdown will help excite and energize his base (even if we’re still about two years out of the next election).

"Time to fight"

“We’re not going to get a better deal under Nancy Pelosi,” Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.), told VICE News. “This is the time to fight. This is the last stand for a Republican effort for the wall.”

If the government’s lights flip off, it will mark the third partial shutdown in the past year – all coming under a Republican-controlled Congress with a Republican in the White House. That’s historic, because Washington hasn’t witnessed the party in control of the House, Senate and White House shutter the government since the Democrats did it when Jimmy Carter was at the helm.

Advertisement

Some Republicans are arguing a shutdown could be viewed by their base as a punishment of sorts to the incoming Democratic majority. “There is a way to structure a shutdown that ruins the vacations of members of Congress and still does not impair the functioning of our government in 2019,” Gaetz argued.

Read: Trump is listening to right wingers who think a shutdown would be awesome

That’s anathema to many Democrats and Republicans alike, because large swaths of the federal government are set to run out of money at midnight, including the Departments of Homeland Security, Agriculture, Treasury, Interior, State and Housing and Urban Development.

The willingness to shutter parts of the government has the more moderate wing of the GOP worried party leaders are now trying to appease their far-right base without actually solving any of the nation’s lingering immigration problems.

“At the end of the day, the debate over the wall and immigration policy is not going away,” Rep. Tom Reed (R-N..Y.) told VICE News. “So the sooner we can focus away from a political hot potato like ‘the wall’ and focus on immigration and border security – now we’re doing stuff for the people back home.”

Some outgoing Republicans are more forceful in their denunciations of these end-of-year ploys.

“This is the new dynamic in our politics, where both parties appeal to their bases and everyone in the middle is left behind – the majority of Americans,” outgoing Rep. Carlos Curbelo (R-Fla.) told VICE News. “And truthfully, everyone gets nothing, so we all lose.”

While Curbelo lost a hard-fought re--election campaign, he says he’s now ready to leave Washington and put these petty legislative games behind him.

“I’m not surprised. This is par for the course for this institution,” Curbelo added. “So I’m not surprised, and I won’t miss it.”

Cover: U.S. President Donald Trump delivers remarks before signing the Agriculture Improvement Act during a ceremony in the South Court Auditorium of the Eisenhower Executive Office Building December 20, 2018 in Washington, DC. (Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)