Wednesday 7 November 2018

Trump very successfully lost!

So my prediction was wrong. Trump and the Republicans lost the House of Representatives to the Democrats. For once the polls were right. But Trump still believes he had a great victory because the Republicans improved their majority in the Senate and Republican governors did well too. But now Trump will have to learn how to be concessionary unless he is determined to go to war with the Democrats in the House. Nancy Pelosi who is expected to be Speaker of the House for the second time in her political career, is no friend of Trump's and he has been positively dismissive of her in the past. But they will have to work together. She will have to play a careful game because if she tries to block everything Trump wants to do, the Democrats will not necessarily help their cause in the country. But one thing is probably for sure and that is the president won't get any money from Congress to build his wall, and if he tries to take money out of the Pentagon budget to start building the border wall on the grounds that frontier fortifications are needed for national security, the Democrats I'm sure will stop that from happening. Incidentally, the US Army Corps of Engineers is already carrying out border construction work, but that's on behalf of the Department of Homeland Security and is paid for out of the DHS budget. No funds have yet been spent on the construction of a new wall, but because planning for such a development has such a long lead time, the Pentagon has told me that advance planning efforts, including contracts for environmental planning and site surveys, are being paid for right now - $7.45 million for financial year 2018 out of the US Navy's operations and maintenance funds. Be that as it may, a Pelosi-run House is not going to let Trump get away with building a wall when there are other more pressing matters such as social welfare and education programmes which need more money. So Trump's declaration of success in the midterms has to be taken with a dose of salt, although it is certainly true that with an even stronger Republican Senate, Trump will be able to railroad through any of his future appointments to the Supreme Court and to his Cabinet. Of course he doesn't need House approval for such appointments. Having a strong Senate on his side will also dampen any thoughts the Democrats in the House might have on the question of trying to impeach Trump for any Russian-type misdemeanours or tax dodging. The Republican-controlled Senate won't buy it, especially with the 2020 presidential election in everyone's minds.

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