Friday on MSNBC’s “Hardball,” former Bush speechwriter and Atlantic writer David Frum said the current government shutdown would end with President Donald Trump backing down over his demand for funding to build a wall at the U.S.-Mexico border.
Frum said, “One of Donald Trump’s difficulties is he doesn’t understand that words connect at points to the real world, that they describe something. He lives in a world in which he watches things on TV, on one network, sometimes CNN a little bit. In that world he’s got designated talkers who are paid by the network, sometimes to go on TV and tell Donald Trump things that he likes. Like the Democrats are divided, or that the country will blame them.”
He added, “Meanwhile, he is about to face this decision. December 31, New Year’s Eve is coming up. There are people who have paid $200,000 annual memberships to go to Mar-a-Lago and schmooze with the president. That’s money that goes into his pocket. He’s expected there. The Secret Service has paid $50,000 for tents for the Secret Service for them at this Mar-a-Lago New Year’s Eve party. Will President Trump go? I assume he will want to go. How will things look the next day when there are images of the president in black tie talking to people who paid $200,000 a year for access to the president while people are out of work? This is a dynamic situation. And there is no exit for the president.”
“He’s already begging for a fig leaf,” he added. “Five billion dollars doesn’t build a wall, now give us $2.5 billion, eventually, give us $1.3. At that point Democrats will say, do they want to give the president cover, and maybe for a lot of reasons they’ll want to do that and proclaim it a victory or they won’t and make him eat it. There’s only one way this ends; Trump backs down, no wall.”
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