MSNBC started off gloating about the shutdown after Trump took ownership of it in the now-famous oval office meeting.
Chuck and Nancy came out smugly and took an arrogant victory lap and the press ate it up. They replayed the meeting in an endless loop happy to finally beat Trump at something.
They, of course, spoke too soon – anyone who knows Trump knows he can be stubborn and he is not bound by the usual political consequences.
In short, he doesn’t care and he knows they do and for that reason, they will cave. From Newsbusters:
Committed liberal Donny Deutsch took to the Morning Joe airwaves on Thursday to warn his colleagues that Donald Trump is “winning” the government shutdown.
Though no fan of the strategy, Deutsch grew frustrated at his fellow co-hosts, yelling, “He’s winning here! You have to understand he’s going to open the government.
He’s going to declare an emergency. He’s going to say, ‘The Democrats closed it.’ He’s going to put the Democrats into court.”
Speaking directly to the Democrats, Deutsch predicted, “I hope Chuck and Nancy, today, you’re figuring it out because he’s going to win this!”
After a perplexed Willie Geist wondered what that meant, the MSNBC panelist explained, “What he’s going to win is he’s going to say, ‘I opened the government. I took control. I put people back to work. I made us safer.’”
Later in the show, Deutsch outlined the possible strategy:
He will absolutely declare an emergency. He’s a reality show producer and he’s producing this. I couldn’t figure out why he went on the air the other night because I knew he wasn’t going to do it then.
He’s like now he gets to say — “I went on the air. I asked the people. I went down to the border. I had these meetings.” And it turns it. It’s a judo move. He’s going to say, “I opened the government,” which basically plays to every autocratic instinct he can. He loves a pardon and anything he can do with a pure executive order.
