Trump’s wall shutdown starts looking less like leverage and more like a hostage situation
The partial shutdown hit another ugly stretch on January 10 as the White House kept insisting that refusing to reopen the government was somehow a show of strength. The political problem for Trump was obvious: he had tied the government’s functioning to a border wall demand with no obvious way to win, while federal workers, agencies, and the broader economy took the hit. By that point the shutdown was no longer hypothetical brinkmanship. It was a real operational failure with a president’s name on it.
First recorded Jan 10, 2019·Meaningfully updated Jan 10, 2019
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Trump’s wall shutdown starts looking less like leverage and more like a hostage situation
The partial shutdown hit another ugly stretch on January 10 as the White House kept insisting that refusing to reopen the government was somehow a show of strength. The political problem for Trump was obvious: he had tied the government’s functioning to a border wall demand with no obvious way to win, while federal workers, agencies, and the broader economy took the hit. By that point the shutdown was no longer hypothetical brinkmanship. It was a real operational failure with a president’s name…
The partial shutdown hit another ugly stretch on January 10 as the White House kept insisting that refusing to reopen the government was somehow a show of strength. The political problem for Trump was obvious: he had tied the government’s functioning to a border wall demand with no obvious way to win, while federal workers, agencies, and the broader economy took the hit. By that point the shutdown was no longer hypo…
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