Nancy Pelosi official picture.
President Donald Trump has canceled a trip by congressional leaders including Nancy Pelosi using military aircraft. Fox News. Pelosi was set to travel to Belgium, Egypt and Afghanistan in a mission to talk to US allies and visit the troops. However, shortly before Pelosi's plane was scheduled to leave her flight was canceled by President Trump. Trump released a letter saying that Pelosi should not leave during the government shutdown and doing so would delay the end of the shutdown by at least a week. Trump said that she could still fly commercial if she wanted. The incident comes after Pelosi canceled President Trump's State of the Union address. Trump's letter to Pelosi can be seen below.
Trump responds Pelosi by on Scribd
My Comment:
I think President Trump was totally justified in doing this, if for no other reason that Pelosi and the other Democrats on this flight should stay home and work on ending the shutdown. Running out of town while tens of thousands of people are missing paychecks for a week is just wildly irresponsible. Pelosi's goal should be to end the shutdown, preferably by giving President Trump some funding for his wall.
Indeed, the trip itself seems like a major own goal for the Democrats. Their allies in the media have tried to paint this shutdown as President Trump's fact, and given that Trump's approval rating has dipped, it was working. Trying to hop on a plane for a week and refusing to even meet with the President will likely make it so even the media has to admit that Pelosi and the Democrats deserve some blame. Or not, given the fact that we don't even have a media anymore...
Some will likely find this move petty and immature. To those people I would say if it hadn't been provoked they might have a point. However, Nancy Pelosi took the unprecedented step to dis-invite President Trump to the State of the Union, for obvious partisan reasons. Pelosi correctly realized that Trump's speech on the border helped him and her response hurt the Democrats and she doesn't want it to happen again. She also knows that Trump's two previous State of the Union addresses were among the best speeches he has ever given, to the point where even the media admitted he did a good job. Pelosi couldn't have that so she canceled it and blamed the shutdown.
Of course I don't really think that Trump's excuse was entirely truthful. Though the justification of the shutdown is more than adequate I think it was more about Trump giving Pelosi back some of her own medicine. You can say what you want about it but it's clear that Pelosi started it.
I haven't written much about the shutdown, largely because I don't care about it. It doesn't effect me directly and I even like the fact that people are realizing that we probably don't need so many government employees. It does suck that people are without paychecks but if they have done even the most basic of financial planning they should be fine, especially since they will be getting their back pay. Unfortunately, financial planning is a rare skill in the United States and very few people have the three to six months of salary saved up. I personally would be fine for quite some time in the same situation, but that's me.
I do think that the Democrats should just give Trump what he wants. He's only asking for $5.7 billion, which is a rounding error for the federal government. The shutdown has already cost the government way more money than that. And I don't think that the Democrats would pay a price for giving Trump what he wants. Their base will blame Trump, not the Democrats, no matter how much the Democrats deserve it. If they were smarter they could even get something they want out of the deal, but instead they are just stonewalling.
I also think at some point Trump should just declare an emergency to get his funding and pay for the wall that way. Doing so would allow the government to reopen and would also get his wall partially built. It would likely face a legal battle which would delay things but if it went to SCOTUS, he would win and win easily considering the makeup of the court.
On the other hand, I don't really care if the shutdown continues indefinitely. At this point the furloughed federal workers should be looking for new jobs. Sure, some services will be missed but it's a much better deal than giving the Democrats what they want and Trump giving up on his biggest campaign promise. He's got very little to lose and a lot to gain if he stands firm.
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