Why Trump did what he did is less controversial when it’s seen as more desperation in the face of Congress now deciding that there’s a limit to the abuse of power so far demonstrated.
Some news sources have described this as a “watershed moment”, by declaring an illusory emergency then going off to a million-dollar-a-day weekend golf vacation in Florida.
The presser might also be another distraction from the 2017 discussions of tactics for implementing the 25th Amendment after the firing of James Comey. When the DoJ claims that Andrew McCabe’s characterizations were “taken out of context” it also doesn’t mean such discussions didn’t happen, similar to the need of Rod Rosenstein to remind us that he’s sarcastic.
The deranged Rose Garden presser has been covered elsewhere, but is remarkable for demonstrating further the lack of fitness for office. PolitiFact shows how many more lies were blurted today.
For example:
"A big majority of the big drugs, the big drug loads don't go through ports of entry. They can't go through ports of entry."
Trump’s own government data undercut his claim.
Trump said he got his numbers from the Homeland Security Department. U.S. Customs and Border Protection, which is part of Homeland Security, reports that most of the drugs come through ports of entry.
CPB’s Office of Field Operations, working at ports of entry, seized 4,813 pounds of heroin during the first 11 months of fiscal year 2018, through Aug. 31, 2018. During the same period, U.S. Border Patrol, which works between legal ports of entry, seized 532 pounds of heroin.
The data also show that fentanyl, another opioid, was seized at ports of entry at a higher rate than at points between ports of entry. CBP recently intercepted a record amount of fentanyl worth $4.6 million at the Port of Nogales.
Information has its limits. The Congressional Research Service warned in December that "data on seizures are available, but these reflect an unknown portion of total drugs traversing U.S. borders."
— Jon Greenberg
Trump says he "didn't need to do this" but just personally preferred to declare a state of emergency because the wall will be built a bit faster
Whatever Trumpian negotiation strategy might be, it’s never worked.
Trump has apparently convinced himself that declaring a national emergency is the only way out of the box that he and Republicans had two years to make Mexico pay for. Perhaps this move will appease the true executive authorities in the United States: Sean Hannity and Ann Coulter. But creating a real constitutional crisis to legitimize a fake border crisis will still not bring Trump any closer to his vanity wall.
There’s no national emergency for “too many brown people” or “Nancy Pelosi isn’t nice to me.”
The National Emergency to Steal Money to Build the Wall That Mexico Didn’t Pay for so I Don’t Look Like a Fool on Fox News is not a legal thing. Congress can stop it. The courts can stop it. The Constitution demands that it be stopped.
www.thenation.com/...
Oliver Roeder discusses the Trump decision (or lack of it) at fivethirtyeight.
Why would an agreement come late? The deadline is partly to blame. Bargainers have little incentive to agree early. Suppose that you and I are bargaining over something and the deadline is a month away. Whether we agree now or in, say, an hour doesn’t matter to us. We are basically indifferent on the timing of a deal. The same will be true tomorrow and the next day. The only time we’ll ever have any incentive to agree earlier rather than later is when there is no later. That’s when we’re truly, finally up against it, with the clock ticking down. In other words, we probably shouldn’t expect a deal on funding the government before Valentine’s Day.
[...]
This last-minute pattern is often seen in bargaining contexts outside of government, too, including pretrial deals between prosecutors and defense attorneys that are struck on the courthouse steps or labor agreements between management and workers that are reached just before a strike.
It matters, too, what each party thinks the other might want. Outcomes of bargaining games are largely predicated on beliefs — my beliefs about what deal you’re willing to accept, and vice versa, or what theorists call “private information.” The specific beliefs the parties hold about the private information of the other — and whether they are accurate — can determine whether a deal happens and the contours of any deal.
The miscalibration of these beliefs is one thing that can lead to a breakdown in negotiations. If, for example, Trump believed he could get $5 billion for the wall from congressional Democrats, he might ask for $5.5 billion, comfortable in the fact that, even with the clock ticking, he could reduce his demand to $5 billion. But if he was wrong, and the Democrats were only willing to part with $3 billion, he might run out of time, no deal would be made and the government would shut down again. (This doesn’t take into account Trump’s other, extreme option: declaring a national emergency to secure funding for the wall.)
fivethirtyeight.com/...