Ditch Mitch

Mitch McConnell, the Senate majority leader, went to bed Wednesday night cautiously optimistic that a shutdown crisis that had stretched back to December had finally ended.

Then President Trump awoke in a rage Thursday, feeling cornered into accepting a bipartisan funding deal struck earlier in the week that would deprive him once again of money for his long-promised wall along the southwestern border.

[...]

By midmorning, after a particularly unpleasant meeting with the secretary of homeland security, Kirstjen Nielsen, the president was threatening to torpedo the deal, according to two people briefed on the exchange. Several hours and several phone calls later, Mr. McConnell had persuaded Mr. Trump to once again agree to sign the bill to avert another government shutdown looming at midnight Friday.

But persuasion came at a price: The president would declare a national emergency to try to secure wall funding without congressional approval, he told the majority leader — and Mr. McConnell would have to back him.

[...]

Mr. McConnell, burned by the last round of negotiations that led to the shutdown in December, concluded that none of Mr. Trump’s previous emissaries to Capitol Hill could be trusted to speak for a president prone to changing his position on a whim.

With Mr. Kushner and the vice president absent, Mick Mulvaney, the interim White House chief of staff, was left to monitor the discussions. An avid supporter of government shutdowns when he was a Republican congressman from South Carolina, Mr. Mulvaney caused considerable tension.

[...]

Mr. McConnell and his staff were especially annoyed by Mr. Mulvaney’s performance on Sunday on the political talk shows, saying he seemed giddy and enthusiastic about the possibility of another shutdown, according to three people familiar with the situation.

[...]

The majority leader, sentimental as a scythe and not one for small talk, decided it was up to him. He began speaking with Mr. Trump three or four times a day, and urged others to do the same, according to several people close to the negotiations.

“I want you all to start calling the president directly,” Mr. McConnell told a group of senior Republicans last week after a conference lunch, according to two people in attendance. “He’s easy to get on the phone.”

[...]

He patiently (and fruitlessly) argued against the emergency declaration, which he sees as usurping congressional authority to splinter Senate Republicans. He also used the check-ins to collect intelligence about Mr. Trump’s mind-set.

To sell the president on the deal, he argued that it was a “big down payment” on the wall and offered to support moves by the president to transfer some funding from other agencies to border barrier projects if he ditched the emergency declaration. But the core of his case, people close to Mr. McConnell said, was the argument that the deal reached by negotiators was actually a “victory” over Ms. Pelosi, thanks to his success in fighting attempts to reduce the number of detention beds.

Mr. Trump never really bought it.

But Mr. McConnell is nothing if not adaptable. During his final call with Mr. Trump, he looped in the White House counsel, Pat Cipollone, who expressed misgivings about the emergency declaration, telling an annoyed Mr. Trump that it would prompt several serious lawsuits.

Mr. McConnell, quickly shifting from opposing the declaration to managing its rollout, snapped back, “Who cares? This is America — everybody sues everybody else.”

  NYT

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.


UPDATE 2/22:  Ditch Mitch Fund