Since his return from Iraq, where he rallied U.S. troops as a kind of Hitler Youth, Trump has gone into hiding, reports the Washington Post. "[He] has had no public events, and aides offered few details about his schedule, other than saying the president was working and making phone calls."
It seems those "phone calls" are nothing but tapped-out tweets, excoriating Democrats for the government shutdown that Trump has inflicted most painfully on 800,000 federal workers." [Trump] has chosen not to use this time to engage in substantive negotiations over the budget," continues the Post, "or seize the public stage and make his case for funding the border wall."
If it appears odd that the man who so eagerly shuttered the government over $5 billion for a useless barrier would suddenly hibernate into tweeting obscurity, then think again. Trump gives not one damn about his sacred wall; as with everything he does, the wall and the shutdown are merely political weapons designed to please his base.
Said retired GOP Congressman Tom Davis, "I don’t know why he wouldn’t make this a fight. I don’t think you pay any price at this point. The election is in two years, and nobody is going to remember this. But his base will remember that he fought for a wall. I don’t see any political consequence."
Indeed. This is government by heartless cynicism. Nearly a million federal workers are anguishing over mortgage payments or even how to buy food for their kids, while the president of the United States fiddles with his phone and feasts on Big Macs. Let them eat cake, says Trump, since they're mostly Democrats anyway. As long as the GOP base is happy, the president is happy.
Meanwhile, Trump has acting staff to spread disinformation — that which the base thrives on. "My gut was that [Trump] was really interested in doing a deal and coming to some sort of compromise," said Acting White House Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney to "Fox & Friends" on Friday. "But the more we’re hearing this week is that it’s Nancy Pelosi who is preventing that from happening." In fact it is Ann Coulter and Rush Limbaugh — those buffoonish Clark Cliffords of the pseudoconservative movement — who are preventing fruitful negotiations.
These are the sadists who will prolong the pain, with no end in sight, for 800,000 Americans: a cynical, heartless president; a gutless, cowering administration; a clownish entourage of partisan nincompoops. Trump often brayed that he alone could fix "the system," although, it turns out, it takes a lot of Trumps to destroy it.