Mitch McConnell to Donald Trump: bon voyage!

| 9:10 pm EST March 5, 2019
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Here’s the thing about a drowning criminal. While his most naive criminal allies might be willing to jump in and try to save him, his savviest criminal allies have no intention of drowning with him. Accordingly, Mitch McConnell just revealed that he’s going to let Donald Trump sink.

Mitch McConnell has announced that next week the Senate will vote on the resolution to cancel Donald Trump’s national emergency, and that the measure will pass. By rule, McConnell could have dragged this vote out a little further than that. And he could have used his considerable influence over nearly every Republican Senator to try to cajole them into siding with Trump on this legislation. But McConnell simply isn’t willing to use any of his own leverage to help bail Trump out of this. He isn’t even willing to try.

Sure, Donald Trump can – and almost certainly will – veto the resolution. There don’t appear to be nearly enough votes to override the veto. But that’s not the point. The fate of the national emergency was always going to be decided by the courts, not via legislation. The whole point of this Democratic Party-sponsored bill was to weaken Trump by getting the Republicans to start formally distancing themselves from him, and sure enough, it’s done precisely that.

For his part, Mitch McConnell has decided that this is now entirely Donald Trump’s problem. Trump will have to veto a bill that was passed by members of both parties, in both houses of Congress. He’ll have to take sole ownership of his idiotic shutdown and his even more idiotic national emergency declaration. More importantly, thirteen House Republicans and at least four Senate Republicans are voting against Trump on something that’s crucial to Trump’s survival. It sets the stage for more of the GOP to selfishly leave Trump to drown.