Trump claims victory of Democrats for government shutdown

We are now well into the third week of the government shutdown and since I am writing this report on Thursday night and it has not been settled, a fourth week is imminent.

Most members of Congress head home for the weekend, and Trump usually heads to one of his resorts to play golf, so I doubt it will be settled before Monday, and unlikely even then.

Even so, Donald Trump believes he has notched the win, and it is only a matter of time before the Democrats cave.

No Hit for Trump

Shockingly, even though polling has been flipping back and forth regarding who is to blame for the shutdown, Trump has not really taken a hit on his approval rating.

The latest polling still has him at 45%, which is where he has been hovering for most of this presidency.

For Trump, that is about as good as it will ever get because he will never get any support, regardless of what he does from the left.

When you have half the Democrat Party disapproving of your peace deal between Israel and Hamas, you know you can’t win.

I Want a Meeting

To me, the sign that Democrats were taking the hit was when Senator Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) was whining in the media that he wanted a meeting with Trump, but Trump is not the one negotiating this deal.

Trump told Schumer he would meet with him, but not right now.

Trump responded, "I would like to meet with both of them, but I said one little caveat, I will only meet if they let the country open.”

I love the strategy.

Losers

The GOP, to me, has been very reasonable about this, even offering a standalone bill to extend the tax cuts for a year, then negotiate Obamacare reform. Dems have rejected that, so what is the point of sitting down with them?

Trump explained, "What they're doing is saying they lost the negotiation. And when we got the great ‘big beautiful [bill]’ done, they lost the negotiation.

“Now they're saying, ‘Well, we want to get some of the things we lost.’ But the problem is the things they lost are very bad for our country."

If I were Trump, I would continue to hold firm, as I believe the American people now realize that Democrats are grandstanding and nothing more. There is a compromise on the table, but Dems are playing a zero-sum game, and that won’t work here.