Donald Trump throws his own House GOP ally under the bus
Based on a number of factors, including his own administration’s remarks to the media, it’s become fairly clear that Donald Trump began abducting and imprisoning immigrant children in the hope of trading them for funding for his border wall. This became even more clear when his Republican allies in the House introduced legislation that would reunite the kids with their parents in exchange for wall funding. Of course that failed, and now Trump is throwing one of his own key House GOP allies under the bus.
Donald Trump’s strategy fell apart when massive public backlash forced him to issue an executive order watering down his own plan, shortly before the House was set to vote on the bill that would have funded his wall. After Trump gave away much of his leverage, the bill predictably failed, with even a number of House Republicans failing to get behind it. Then the House GOP tried again, and the bill failed by an even wider margin.
Now it appears that no immigration bill will ever get out of the House as long as the GOP is in charge of it. Donald Trump is partly (and falsely) blaming the Democrats in the Senate, even though neither of the House bills ever reached the Senate. Notably, Trump is also partly blaming his close ally, House Judiciary Committee Chair Bob Goodlatte, tweeting “I never pushed the Republicans in the House to vote for the Immigration Bill, either GOODLATTE 1 or 2, because it could never have gotten enough Democrats as long as there is the 60 vote threshold. I released many prior to the vote knowing we need more Republicans to win in Nov.”
This is remarkable, considering that Bob Goodlatte just got finished holding a farce of a hearing aimed at propping up Donald Trump’s wildest anti-FBI conspiracy theories. Goodlatte stuck his neck out to try to help Trump, and now Trump is throwing Goodlatte under the bus – in all capital letters, no less.
