January 20, 2018, was a busy day.
Women marched across the world protesting the current political environment and fighting for their rights, and the day marked the one-year anniversary of President Trump’s inauguration.
Trump himself was unable to celebrate the one-year anniversary of his presidency due to a government shutdown that was of his own creation.
Yes, you heard me right. The reason the government shutdown, the reason our military and other government workers went without pay, is because of President Trump.
All weekend, Trump tweeted about Senator Chuck Schumer and the Democrats “holding the government hostage," but the Democratic Party wasn’t to blame. After all, the Republicans not only control the White House but both chambers of Congress as well. This is the first time in history a government shutdown has happened under those conditions.
As every person learns when they are about two, you don’t always get your way. As we age, we learn that instead of stamping our feet and screaming when this happens, we have to compromise. And there lies the problem with this whole shutdown — President Trump never learned to compromise.
Instead, he chooses to act like a toddler, time and time again, whining over Twitter when things don’t go his way when all he had to do was compromise a little. All the Democrats wanted was a deal on DACA, and they would have probably given their votes to keep the government open.
In fact, President Trump was even offered a bipartisan deal on DACA that covered all of his basic immigration stipulations on the same day he referred to Haiti and African countries, predominantly non-white countries, as “shitholes.” He rejected it.
And the self-proclaimed deal-maker did absolutely nothing to fix the impending government shutdown, spending the weekend moping around the White House and whining like a child on Twitter instead. A bipartisan deal was made without President Trump’s leadership, funding the government until February 8th and the Children’s Health Insurance Program.
Now that the government is reopened, lawmakers have until February 8th to work out an immigration deal, and both sides are going to have to compromise. But nobody has to compromise more than President Trump, especially if he wants to avoid another government shutdown.
As the president himself once said when criticizing President Obama, government shutdowns come at the fault of the president.
Will Trump learn from his mistakes and compromise, becoming the deal-maker he advertised himself to be during the campaign, or will he once again throw a temper tantrum like a two year old and allow the government to shutdown again?
