Watch: The Shouting Match In The Oval Office That Could Change Everything

Michael Snyder is the publisher of The Economic Collapse Blog, The American Dream Blog and The Truth. You can follow him on Twitter right here

Thanks to a wild shouting match in the Oval Office on Tuesday, there is a very good chance that there will be a partial government shutdown starting on December 21st.  With the cameras rolling and the room full of reporters, President Trump went at it with Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer, and it truly was a bizarre scene unlike anything that we have ever witnessed before.  Yes, Republicans and Democrats have always been calling each other names, but watching these leaders rip into one another live on national television inside the Oval Office was truly unprecedented.  The following is how the Washington Post described what took place…

President Trump, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi and Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer berated each other on camera Tuesday over Trump’s border wall, an Oval Office spectacle that underscored the distance between the two sides as they confront a fast-approaching deadline for a partial government shutdown.

If you have not seen video of this altercation yet, you can watch it right here.

Almost the entire time, the focus of the shouting match was border security.  President Trump wants to build the wall that he promised the American people, and obviously the Democrats are determined to keep him from doing that.  Since the Democrats will be taking control of the House once the new session of Congress begins in January, this is probably Trump’s last best chance to make progress on the wall, and so he is threatening to shut the government down if he doesn’t get the funding that he needs.

In fact, during the shouting match he told Chuck Schumer that he would be “proud to shut down the government for border security”…

‘I am proud to shut down the government for border security, Chuck, because the people of this country don’t want criminals and people that have lots of problems and drugs pouring into our country. So I will take the mantle,’ he said. ‘I will be the one to shut it down. I’m not going to blame you for it. The last time you shut it down, it didn’t work. I will take the mantle of shutting down.’

After the shouting match was over, Nancy Pelosi was visibly disturbed, and she was extremely critical of Trump once she returned to the Capitol…

The California congresswoman, who’s vying to become the next House speaker, made the blistering remarks after returning to the Capitol from a tense Oval Office sit down with Trump, during which he repeatedly threatened to shut down the federal government if Congress fails to cough up at least $5 billion for his long-sought border wall with Mexico.

“It’s like a manhood thing for him,” Pelosi told the Dems of Trump’s wall obsession, according to the source. “As if manhood could ever be associated with him.”

And subsequently she stated that if you “get into a tinkle contest with a skunk, you get tinkle all over you.”

Needless to say, Tuesday’s “negotiating session” will make it much more difficult for the two sides to come to any sort of an agreement.  Anyone that backs down now is going to look weak, and neither side is going to want to do that.

So how is this going to end?

That all depends on Trump.  The spineless Republican leadership in Congress is more than willing to play ball with the Democrats, and so everything depends on how much Trump wants the wall.

If Trump buckles now, he will never make any progress once Democrats officially take control of the House, and he will go into the 2020 election without being able to deliver on his primary campaign promise from the 2016 election.

So it would make sense for Trump to choose this moment to fight for the wall, but it certainly does not sound like Chuck Schumer has any intention of giving him what he wants.  The following comes from Axios…

The president taking ownership of any potential government shutdown hinders Republicans’ ability to pin the blame on Democrats, while also giving a glimpse into what Trump’s negotiating style with a Democrat-controlled House may look like over the next two years.

Trump has demanded $5 billion for the border wall, but Schumer has drawn a red line on providing no more than $1.3 billion — not for a wall, but for border security. “This temper tantrum that [Trump] seems to throw will not get him his wall and it will hurt a lot of people because he will cause a shutdown,” Schumer said in a press conference following the Oval Office altercation.

In the end, this is another perfect example of how broken our government has become.  We are nearly 22 trillion dollars in debt, but there isn’t even any discussion about reducing the size of our deficits.  Instead, the Democrats are trying to paint Trump into a corner on border security, and they probably truly believe that they are going to force his hand.

But a government shutdown this time of the year might not be such a bad thing.  If it happens, it will begin on December 21st…

If the president follows through on the threat, about 25 percent of the federal government would begin to run out of money on Dec. 21, putting hundreds of thousands of federal workers at risk of getting furloughed without pay just before Christmas.

Let’s imagine that a government shutdown lasts into early January.  What government worker wouldn’t want to have a couple of weeks off around the holidays?

They all know that they will be returning to work eventually, and not much work usually gets done around the holidays in Washington anyway.

However, if a shutdown stretches beyond a couple of weeks, there will be tremendous pressure on Trump to end it.

Will he stand strong and keep fighting for a wall that the Democrats have pledged to never give him, or will he end up caving?

We don’t have the answer to that question right now, and it will be fascinating to see how this plays out.

About the author: Michael Snyder is a nationally syndicated writer, media personality and political activist. He is publisher of The Most Important News and the author of four books including The Beginning Of The End and Living A Life That Really Matters.

Michael Snyder is the publisher of The Economic Collapse Blog, The American Dream Blog and The Truth. You can follow him on Twitter right here

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