Trump smoked Democrats on DACA

Remember in September when every expert pundit in Washington and on TV said President Trump had caved on DACA?  From my laptop in Poca, West Virginia, I advised readers to relax. Wait and see what will happen.

Now we see what is happening.

Nothing.



Nothing was supposed to happen.

President Trump gave Congress six months to change the law or he would enforce it. By the way, there is nothing wrong with the law. Presidents are just too chicken to enforce it.

Trump knew that Congress operates at the speed of government which is -- as every fan of Ron "Tater Salad" White knows -- half the speed of smell.

With less than a month left to stop enforcement of the 1986 immigration reform law, the Senate voted down four proposals, including Trump's.

"As senators struck down measure after measure, a week that began with the promise of a rare open, free-ranging debate on the issue crashed headlong into the same divisions that have prevented Congress from fixing the nation’s immigration system for decades, leaving in doubt whether any solution on the Dreamers can be reached," the New York Times reported.

(Pay walls are not linked.)

The Senate needs 60 votes to make DACA law.

But if senators don't include a wall or other things the president wants, they will need 67 votes to override his veto.

"The votes were a stark reminder that Congress remains paralyzed by the immigration issue. Former Presidents Barack Obama and George W. Bush both tried to overhaul the system, but were stymied by lawmakers frozen into inaction, in part because of powerful interests on both sides," the Times reported.

But the Times did not identify these "powerful interests."

"What will happen now is unclear. An estimated 690,000 young undocumented immigrants have been protected from deportation by an Obama-era program, Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or DACA. Another 1.1 million would be eligible," the Times reported.

Oh, we know what will happen. It starts with a D and it rhymes with reportation.

Democrats tried to spin Trump as killing a bipartisan bill with a veto threat. But the Hill reported the Senate's bipartisan plan left the House cold as well.

"It’s not clear whether the bill would have moved in the House, though its passage by the Senate would have increased pressure on Speaker Paul Ryan," the Hill reported.

Dylan Scott at Vox had a better handle on the situation than the Times did.

"The dream looks dead," Scott wrote.

"The Senate failed Thursday afternoon to advance any of the four immigration bills that were put on the floor for a vote, unable to make any movement toward protecting young people brought illegally to the United States as children."

What Scott is seeing now is what readers saw in September.

"It leaves the Senate, after a government shutdown and month of negotiations, with no clear path forward on immigration, nearly six months after Trump said he would end the DACA program without congressional action," Scott wrote.

The responsibility for the deportations is now on Congress, particularly the Democrats.

Trump schooled Washington on the Art of the Deal. He didn't need one. They did.

Does this mean there will not be an immigration reform bill?

There still could be one, but only on the president's terms. Trump is not going to sell us out. He will make Congress do his bidding.

But no deal works almost as well.

President Trump won the moment he met with Nancy and Chuck. They just didn't know it.

In that Obamacare repeal fiasco, Trump learned how incompetent Congress is. After six years of bitching about Obamacare, Republicans had no plan to replace it.

But he realized that Democrats are just as bad. They really have no DACA plan.

So in September, he called Nancy and Chuck to the White House and told them what they already knew: there is no DACA law.

He gave them six months to fix it.

They were ecstatic.

He just sat back and watched their train wreck.

But hey, what does Trump know? He's just a reality show personality, right?

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From Leslie Eastman's review at Legal Insurrection:

Surber, a recovering journalist with over 30 years of experience, has been cataloging the #FakeNews that has been regularly offered as serious analysis of President Donald Trump’s actions, policies, and opinions. He has brought his enormous collection together in the longest, most serious book he has yet written: Fake News Follies 2017.

"Fake News Follies of 2017" is available on Kindle and in paperback.

Autographed copies are available. Email me at DonSurber@GMail.com for details. I am including a "director's cut." I'll email you back the original Chapter 1 that I cut because while the chapter was amusing, it really had nothing to do with the "Fake News Follies of 2017."

Ben Garrison did the cover and I am so happy with it. I told him what the book was about, sent him a copy of the manuscript, and he came up with a perfect cover. I am so pleased.