A shutdown means the President is weak

“A shutdown falls on the President’s lack of leadership. He can’t even control his party and get people together in a room. A shutdown means the President is weak.”

A prominent American made the above observation some years ago, and over the recent holiday season I’ve spent some time reflecting on his wise words as we’ve been suffering under our third U.S. government shutdown under the Trump presidency.

Is Trump weak? Can he get people together in a room? Well, sure he can— he got Speaker-Elect Nancy Pelosi and the Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer into the Oval Office on Dec. 21 in a supposed attempt to make a deal to avoid just such a government shutdown. Problem is, Trump thought he’d pull one over on the Democratic leadership by inviting the assembled TV cameras of the national media into their high-stakes, sensitive meeting – which was supposed to be held in private – the better to shame the Pelosi and Schumer into submission by… by... by what, exactly? What trick did this self-proclaimed master dealmaker have up his sleeve?

Nothing. Trump had absolutely nothing up his sleeve except, apparently, some faint notion that the Democratic leadership would wilt under the glare of the television camera lights— or something? Instead, Pelosi and Schumer called his bluff: No, they said, essentially: They wouldn’t vote to give billions of dollars of funding to his stupid wall. Trump cornered, responded like a petulant child: “If we don’t get what we want, I am proud to shutdown the government,” he said. “I will take the mantle. I will be the one to shut it down. I’m not going to blame you for it.” (Have no fear: Once the shutdown actually kicked in, Trump and his minions wasted no time in trying to blame the whole thing on – you guessed it – the Democrats. This is a man, after all, who takes responsibility for nothing, save the stock market— but only when the stock market’s up.)

Which brings us to where we are now. (Or where we were: At press time, the shutdown was still in effect. Who knows what the new Democratic-led House might come up with in the ensuing days, though.)

But let’s get back to our original question: Can Trump control his own party? Heck – he can’t even control his own administration, his own business, his own supposedly “charitable” foundation – or himself. His first National Security Advisor, his campaign chairman, and his longtime personal lawyer have all confessed to felonies; his private business, his campaign, his transition team, his inaugural committee, and his White House are all under criminal investigation. (His “university” and his foundation were both shut down due to illegal activity.) He cheated on his first wife with his second wife, cheated on his second wife with his third wife, then cheated on his third wife with a porn actress, then lied about paying hush money to the porn star – before now claiming that, hey, c’mon, that hush money payment had nothing to do with preventing the American people from finding out about my affair with the porn actress right before the election —it was just an old-fashioned hush-money payment.

He’s had more people leave his administration in its first two years than any other presidential administration in history. He now has an “acting” secretary of defense (with no experience in either the military or in foreign policy), an “acting” attorney general, no Secretary of the Interior (his first appointee resigned in scandal and shame), an “acting” EPA administrator. Trump’s own Chief of Staff – arguably the second most powerful job in the world – is “acting.” (This man– Mick Mulvaney – also described Trump just a couple years ago as “a terrible human being.”) The permanent position was offered to virtually every Republican in Washington, but no one wanted the job.

In November, China’s soybean imports from the U.S. (vast amounts of which came from North Dakota) were – for the first time since Trump’s self-declared “trade war” with China was announced – zero. China has new soybean suppliers— those sales aren’t coming back. Trump – the great dealmaker – destroyed that market. Not to worry, though— we’re borrowing money from China to pay subsidies to the farmers affected by the trade war.

Into this morass steps North Dakota’s new Senator, Kevin Cramer— the man who proudly said he’d vote with Trump “100%” of the time recently told the “Fargo Forum” that he and his family live “paycheck to paycheck.” Left unsaid: He also has a net worth of nearly a million dollars. He was upfront with the Forum about why, after saying he wasn’t interested in running for Heidi Heitkamp’s seat, he changed his mind: He got a call from the CEO of an oil company.

But let’s get back to that damning quote we started off with. Who was it that said— in 2013, as it turns out, that “a shutdown falls on the President’s lack of leadership. . . a shutdown means the President is weak”?

It was Donald Trump.

Corey Seymour is a proud NRHS graduate who went on to study political science, economics and literature at UND and Georgetown University. A former writer and editor on the National Affairs Desk at “Rolling Stone” and at many other magazines, he now works as a senior editor at “Vogue” in New York. Write him at [email protected].