January 26, 2019

Day After Shutdown Surrender, Trump Is Having One Sad Morning on Twitter

The president appears to be acting as if his own announcement ending the shutdown never happened.

Yuri Gripas/ZUMA

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President Donald Trump’s announcement that he would agree to a short-term spending bill to reopen the government after the longest shutdown in American history—the very same deal he had previously rejected more than a month earlier—marked one of the most bruising defeats of a presidency replete with bad days.

That sting of failure, the second major concession Trump has made to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi since the shutdown started, was visible from the president’s Twitter account late Friday into the next morning, as he attempted to convince supporters that the shutdown deal was not at all a concession, as nearly all major news outlets, pundits, and even the president’s fiercest supporters were characterizing.

“I wish people would read or listen to my words on the Border Wall,” Trump lamented hours after the agreement was announced. “This was in no way a concession.”

That didn’t appear to cajole the typically Trump-friendly Lou Dobbs or Ann Coulter—two fierce proponents of the border wall. “I mean, she has just whipped the president of the United States,” Dobbs said, referring to Pelosi, on his Fox News program on Friday. He continued: “You know, I’m an animated, energetic supporter of this president but you’ve got to call it as it is: This president said it was going to be conditional, border security building that wall and he just reversed himself. That’s a victory for Nancy Pelosi.”

The abandoned support is clearly weighing on the president, who spent much of Saturday morning tweeting as if his own announcement on Friday never happened:

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In "It's Not a Crisis. This Is the New Normal," we explain, as matter-of-factly as we can, what exactly our finances look like, how brutal it is to sustain quality journalism right now, what makes Mother Jones different than most of the news out there, and why support from readers is the only thing that keeps us going. Despite the challenges, we're optimistic we can increase the share of online readers who decide to donate—starting with hitting an ambitious $300,000 goal in just three weeks to make sure we can finish our fiscal year break-even in the coming months.

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