President Trump: DACA Probably Dead Because Democrats Don’t Really Want It

The Democrats are all talk and no action. They are doing nothing to fix DACA. Great opportunity missed. Too bad!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 13, 2018

I don’t believe the Democrats really want to see a deal on DACA. They are all talk and no action. This is the time but, day by day, they are blowing the one great opportunity they have. Too bad!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 13, 2018

DACA is probably dead because the Democrats don’t really want it, they just want to talk and take desperately needed money away from our Military.

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 14, 2018

I think President Trump is probably right about this.

It’s not because the Republicans are unwilling to betray the base on immigration. Just look at the Gang of 8 or the proposed Triple Oreo Amnesty. It’s just that Democrats have no incentive to compromise when they are poised to retake the House in the 2018 midterms.

Why do you think Dick Durbin leaked the shithole countries comment? It came immediately after the Senate had struck a deal with Jeff Flake. It’s because the Democrats want to have the DACA issue to run against Trump as a “racist.” Why would they deflate their base now?

The Democrats just won Jeff Sessions’s Senate seat in Alabama which should have been an impossible political feat, but happened because of disgust with Mitch McConnell. The sensible thing to do is string Republicans along, maximize Republican infighting over amnesty and alienate Trump from his base without ever striking a deal. Then use the DACA issue as a club to bludgeon him with when Democrats retake Congress. This is what Republicans have done with DACA since 2014.

It really depends on whether pro-amnesty donors and activists can force the issue now. If the pressure is strong enough it could still happen, but Democrats have an interest in maintaining the status quo. And no, there isn’t any 4D Chess here because Trump could have just killed DACA himself and declared victory or allowed the Texas lawsuit to kill DACA at the Supreme Court. Instead, Texas dropped the lawsuit because of Trump’s actions in September, thereby saving DACA from its likely demise.

The goal here seems to be to find an excuse for not funding the border wall. Trump can say, I was ready to do this big deal, but the Democrats wouldn’t let me have it. In such a way, the debate can be shifted from the fact that the Senate has refused to fund it all along. Mitch McConnell could have funded the border wall in April 2017 and September 2017, but deftly kicked the can down the road.