{"id":294298,"date":"2018-12-11T16:00:00","date_gmt":"2018-12-11T21:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/admin.rushlimbaugh.com\/?p=294298"},"modified":"2018-12-12T16:25:39","modified_gmt":"2018-12-12T21:25:39","slug":"trump-jousts-with-chuck-and-nancy-on-the-wall","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rushlimbaugh.com\/daily\/2018\/12\/11\/trump-jousts-with-chuck-and-nancy-on-the-wall\/","title":{"rendered":"Trump Pounces on Chuck and Nancy in the Oval Office"},"content":{"rendered":"

RUSH: It\u2019s happening right now in the Oval Office. Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer meeting with President Trump over the funding of the border wall. And I think I understand what\u2019s going on here, and I\u2019m gonna try to explain it to you.<\/p>\n

Greetings, my friends. Great to have you with us, as always. Telephone number, if you want to be on the program, 800-282-2882, and send an email to ElRushbo@eibnet.us.<\/p>\n

Okay. So this really revolves around what does Trump have, as in leverage over Schumer and Pelosi? They don\u2019t want a wall. They\u2019ve offered a paltry $1.3 billion. Trump wants $5 billion. He wants $5 billion to build a wall. Schumer, Pelosi don\u2019t want a wall, but they have offered $1.3 billion as a starting point.<\/p>\n

\"\"They think they hold all the cards. I mean, if they deny Trump any of the federal budget to build a wall as the incoming king and queen of the — well, she\u2019s gonna be the queen of the House. Schumer is, course, gonna be the minority over in the Senate, but he\u2019s still the Democrat leader there, so that\u2019s why they\u2019re both up there.<\/p>\n

So Trump wants $5 billion. Here\u2019s what\u2019s happened. The original budget request for the Department of Defense, Trump did not give the secretary of defense, Mad Dog Mattis, every dime that he asked for. Trump actually has submitted a budget, or will, that does not contain — this is before today — the precise amount of money that Mattis wants. Pelosi and Schumer offering 1.3. Trump say he wants $5 billion. All of a sudden Trump has changed his mind on the defense budget, and he has told Mattis to submit a defense budget for the Pentagon of $750 billion.<\/p>\n

This will be the proposal for fiscal year 2020. This is different from a previous promise that Trump had made to cut the defense budget. It wasn\u2019t much, but it was still a cut rather than what usually are automatic expenses. The $750 billion number came out of a meeting last week when Trump got the lay of the land and figured out that Pelosi and Schumer are probably not going to come close to the $5 billion or agreeing to it in the budget, because this is all gonna happen next year. And they\u2019re trying to get some of this done before the budget expires at the end of this year, government shutdown on December 21st if they don\u2019t come to any sort of an agreement on spending for the remainder of the year.<\/p>\n

Now, the original defense budget was $733 billion. That\u2019s what Trump had previously said that he would support. Now he\u2019s asked Mattis to go back and resubmit 750. The upshot is that if Pelosi and Schumer do not join him and authorize and agree to $5 billion for the wall, Trump is gonna take it out of the military budget. That\u2019s why the increase from $733 billion to $750 billion. There\u2019s $34 billion additional in the defense budget authorization or request than what the original number was.<\/p>\n

\"\"And Trump is said to be thinking of getting the $5 billion, if Pelosi and Schumer don\u2019t play ball — and there\u2019s no reason for them to. They don\u2019t want a wall. They want no part of Trump having any kind of success on his key issue. They\u2019re up there talking to him. I think it\u2019s exploratory to figure out what his mood is, to figure out where his head is.<\/p>\n

But as far as the Democrats are concerned, they now run the town again. And since they have the House of Representatives and run the Ways and Means Committee in the House, which is where all spending bills must, by law, originate, unless presidents try to play games with executive actions and executive orders. But all legislative funding bills must begin in the House in the Ways and Means Committee.<\/p>\n

So it looks like Trump, in requesting an additional $34 billion for defense, could simply say I\u2019m gonna build a wall out of defense money, and I\u2019m gonna call it a national security project. This is one of the theories that is being bandied about. And this in effect would be an end run around Pelosi and Schumer and anybody else in Congress, either party, neither of whom want a wall, if we get down to brass tacks.<\/p>\n

But it\u2019s key for Trump, as you know. It\u2019s the seminal primary campaign issue that got him elected. Getting a handle on border security, illegal immigration, and building a wall. And I think Trump knows that he\u2019s got to get something done on that score, especially now with the phony attempts to claim that private financial transactions between him and a couple of women who were trying to extort him are somehow crimes which would qualify as impeachable or indictable crimes. It\u2019s just absurd.<\/p>\n

Mark Penn has written a piece on this today which covers much of the ground we covered on that whole premise yesterday. And there\u2019s some others weighing in on it as well who I think understand exactly what\u2019s going on. When you compare, by the way, what one of the lines in Mark Penn\u2019s column is that we are on the verge of going back to the horrible days of 1998<\/a>, which is a period of time Mark Penn says we should not ever want to return to.<\/p>\n

What happened in 1998? Well, that\u2019s when Bill Clinton was impeached, and everybody thought he was impeached over sex. He actually wasn\u2019t impeached over sex. He was impeached because he lied under oath during grand jury testimony and attempted to get other people to lie under oath, which was a direct assault on, of course, the rule of law and the Constitution.<\/p>\n

But everybody thought that the Republicans were going after Clinton for sex, having an illicit affair with a 19-year-old, helpless intern who had groupie eyes and groupie heart and was take advantage of. And Penn says, we\u2019re going back now to sex, we\u2019re gonna go back, we\u2019re gonna get rid of another president because of sex? And this isn\u2019t even about sex. The SDNY and Mueller will say, \u201cIt isn\u2019t about sex. This is about illegal campaign finance violations.\u201d It\u2019s not that at all! And, if necessary, we\u2019ll revisit this to again make the point.<\/p>\n

But, you see, here\u2019s the thing. Back to the budget business with Pelosi and Schumer. Congress does not usually earmark every dollar in the federal budget and how it must be spent. They designate areas and how much money an area or an item or a department is going to get. I\u2019s done, but very rarely does Congress actually specify dollar for dollar where money must be spent.<\/p>\n

\"\"So in the defense budget, if there\u2019s $34 billion extra and Congress does not say that the money must be spent here, and if they do not earmark every dollar of the defense budget for certain projects, that means Trump\u2019s theory is that, hey, that\u2019s the money that\u2019s not earmarked, it\u2019s not specified, I can take it and do with it what I want since I\u2019m commander-in-chief.<\/p>\n

If the Democrats figure this out, figure out this is what\u2019s going on, then they might try to earmark everything, or they might try to put something in legislation specifying that not a single penny of the defense budget or any other budget can be used to build a wall — or, as they might say, “Nothing over $1.3 billion.” Now, you might be saying, “Well, if they\u2019re totally opposed to it, why allow $1.3 billion?”<\/p>\n

Well, it\u2019s to allow them to say they care about border security. It\u2019s to allow them to say that they\u2019ve authorized $1.3 billion. It\u2019s also not nearly enough to get the job done. It\u2019s not nearly enough to build a serious wall in all of the places that a serious wall needs to be built. But it will allow them cover. It will allow them to be able to say (and for the media to say about them) that, “Hey, we care about border security. We worked with the president.<\/p>\n

“But his demands were just over the top and unreal and unusual. We offered $1.3 billion, and he refused it and is now making an end run.” The bottom line for Trump is: Get it done. If he has to expand the defense budget by $34 billion and go take an additional $3.5 or the total $5 billion out of it to get the wall built, he\u2019s got to do it. That is, for lack of a better term, the security blanket that Trump has.<\/p>\n

BREAK TRANSCRIPT<\/p>\n

RUSH: So right now the cable news networks are showing delayed video of Trump and Pence and Pelosi and Schumer in the Oval Orifice. No details on the talks yet, but I can tell you, I\u2019m pretty confident how this might manifest itself, \u2019cause I really can\u2019t see Pelosi and Schumer agreeing to this $5 billion. They don\u2019t want a wall! They certainly… They don\u2019t want Trump to have any kind, at this stage — any kind of success — on an issue, especially one that was his primary campaign issue and one they know is the reason he got elected.<\/p>\n

They want him to crash and burn on this. So it\u2019s gonna be up to Trump to creatively find money that they don\u2019t authorize, and they\u2019re gonna have to find ways to make sure that Trump can\u2019t spend money that they haven\u2019t authorized, because they haven\u2019t earmarked it. Now, everybody in the room\u2019s all smiles and everything. But we\u2019re gonna find out here. You know, what does Trump have? What leverage does he have? We don\u2019t know.<\/p>\n