President Trump has never been one, during his time in office, to let the legislative processes proceed unimpeded. He has, instead, sought to enforce his policy will at every turn via belligerent threats and grandiose policy proposals. For instance, he threatened to veto a spending bill earlier this year because it did not include the funding he wanted for border security.
He ended up signing that bill and yet another Trump era government shutdown was averted.
In the time since that incident, though, he has hardly wavered in his commitment to the core of his policy platform. He still wants to see a wall go up in between the United States and Mexico as a part of his still intact broader aim to restrict immigration to the United States.
Thus, the fact that the funding provided by the spending bill he signed into law earlier this year will soon expire has given him a new opportunity to seek to get Congress to go along with his plans. Despite his most passionate intentions, though, it’s not as though he’s proven himself to have a particular knack for legislative negotiating. Posting angry tweets isn’t a generally solid negotiating strategy.
Even still, that’s precisely the strategy that he took to employing this week, posting a message on Twitter this Saturday calling on Congress to incorporate provisions for his desired “border security” measures into upcoming spending legislation.
He wrote:
‘The Senate should get funding done before the August break, or NOT GO HOME. Wall and Border Security should be included. Also waiting for approval of almost 300 nominations, worst in history. Democrats are doing everything possible to obstruct, all they know how to do. STAY!’
To start with, if the president wants his nominees to be confirmed speedily, then perhaps he should be sending Congress better ones. Pushing out failed officials and choosing individuals with questionable at best qualifications to replace them doesn’t give him the place to whine about Democrats supposedly being “obstructionists.”
It’s not even immediately clear where he got the number of almost 300 as representing the number of nominations that he’s sent to the Senate and aren’t confirmed yet. The Washington Post reported that as of May 10 of this year, there were only 194 nominations awaiting Senate approval. At this point in Barack Obama’s tenure, there were 212 presidential nominations awaiting Senate approval, as a point for comparison.
That’s not where the issues with the above tweet from the president end.
It has never been and will never be a fitting idea for there to be a wall go up in between the United States and its southern neighbor. Undocumented border crossings are under control in the sense of that they’re at a lower level than they were during many previous years. Putting up the wall would be like outfitting someone with a prosthetic limb — while their actual limb was still intact. It’s an out of place idea that is an affront to the basic human dignity of the people who would be on the other side of the wall and aren’t animals to be corralled.
Even still, the president is pressing on with his plans anyway, and he’s already suggested that he’s open to shutting down the government when it comes time to sign a new spending bill if he doesn’t get his way.
Check out Twitter’s response below.
Featured Image via Andrew Harrer/Bloomberg via Getty Images
