'Knock them in the teeth.' How Trump turns crises into leverage. (or tries to)

[highplainsdem]

WaPo analysis:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/knock-them-in-the-teeth-how-trump-turns-crises-into-leverage/2019/01/22/3f3dbfc8-1e60-11e9-9145-3f74070bbdb9_story.html

“It’s a Trumpian way of negotiating,” longtime friend Larry Kudlow told a radio interviewer last year before joining the White House. “You knock them in the teeth and get their attention. And then you kind of work out a deal.”

-snip-

“Trump is running the shutdown as a reality television producer,” said Dan Eberhart, a prominent Republican donor. “The problem is he was hired to run a government, grow an economy and protect a country, not be a successful producer.”

One foreign diplomat, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to reveal how some foreign leaders perceive Trump, said the U.S. president at first unnerved European leaders and scared them with his rhetoric. “Now you just know what he’s going to do and you kind of shrug it off. You can’t totally ignore him because he’s the president of the United States. But he doesn’t scare people like he used to.”

“All of life is a negotiation, and that every negotiation is a zero-sum game,” former Trump aide Cliff Sims writes in his new book, “Team of Vipers,” describing Trump’s outlook. “There’s no such thing as a win-win; someone will win and someone will lose.”

Trump did not initially plan on forcing the government shutdown. McConnell and Ryan thought they had persuaded him to sign a government spending bill that did not include money for a border wall just days before government agencies would run out of money.

But he reversed course two days before funding was scheduled to lapse, under pressure from conservative activists, and decided to employ his leverage strategy for the first time with Congress. Several White House officials said there was no game plan for what to do next, and they had to come up with a plan after the shutdown began.

“This guy is not really good at thinking his way out of the problem,” said Timothy Naftali, a clinical associate professor of public service at New York University. “He just ups the ante and hopes the pain he causes others pushes them beyond their pain threshold.”

-snip-

[pangaia]

1. McConnell and Ryan thought they had persuaded him to sign a government spending bill

that did not include money for a border wall ..."

The why is McConnell refusing to bring it up?

[Thunderbeast]

2. Coulter, Limbaugh, Hannity.

that's why!

[dalton99a]

3. The terrorist will use this same tactic again in a few months

Trump’s critics think he will use this same tactic again in a few months, when lawmakers must decide whether to raise the debt ceiling or risk having the government default on its debts.

“He can’t be successful on holding these folks hostage, because he will do it again on the debt ceiling and the end of the appropriations cycle,” Sen. Mark R. Warner (D-Va.) said.