Chaos at White House Correspondents’ Dinner

 For the first time in Trump’s two presidencies, the president had decided to attend the ritzy White House Correspondents’ Dinner, although unlike other years a comedian would not be hosting and roasting the beltway and the notoriously thin-skinned president. Before the event was to begin, chaos erupted with an attempted shooter who was staying at the hotel broke through the relaxed security and according to their manifesto planned to shoot top administration officials.

The perpetrator was stopped and the dinner had been put on pause to continue at a later date. 

As expected, Republicans have used this to attack Democrats’ rhetoric and the President used this to push for his ballroom to continue construction.

There are just some glaring hypocrisies with the right’s arguments  against the left.

First, they attack the language used by the left as violent and decisive. Karoline Leavitt, Trump’s Press Secretary cried about Democrats on Monday morning but she conveniently forgot that just moments before the chaos she specifically said “shots would be fired.”

I also find the demand for a ballroom to be ridiculous as the White House Correspondents’ Dinner had not been held at the White House in the past so to say an external event never held at the White House justifies such a project is ridiculous. 

The dinner had also saw reduced security for the night, especially with several high-profile administration officials in attendance, such as the president, vice-president, Secretary of Defense, or others. This is somewhat reminiscent of Trump not requiring magnetometers at his January 6th protests and when it turned out people with guns or violent intentions participated, Trump blamed Democrats for the failures of his administration.

I am also reminded of the Chinese national who was able to sneak past initial security protections at Mar-a-Lago during Trump’s first presidency. 

Trump’s administration’s shortcomings should not justify major capital improvements, otherwise they can fail miserably on purpose and use that as a justification to accomplish their goals…

 

Pirro’s Cost Overrun Hypocrisy

Prosecutors for the U.S. District Attorney’s office for District of Columbia visited the construction site for the Federal Reserve but were turned down for attempting to speak with Jerome Powell in the absence of his legal representation. District Attorney Jeanine Pirro defended the move by tweeting “Any construction project that has cost overruns of almost 80% over the original construction budget deserves some serious review. And these people are in charge of monetary policy in the United States?" 

Apparently she did not see the ballooning costs of Trump’s grandiose ballroom, which has more than doubled in cost to over $400 million dollars, and the ballroom has not even begun to be built.

Republicans Reveal TSA Was Only a Prop

In the latest series of funding fights between Democrats and Republicans, there had been two versions of events. 

Republicans insist that while they control all branches of the government, Democrats are the ones to blame for a partial shutdown of the government. This shutdown impacted the Department of Homeland Security, the Coast Guard, the TSA, and FEMA. The sticking point for Democrats were that they had wanted to see some institutional changes regarding ICE, such as requiring body cams, removal of masks, and clear identification being part of those changes. Republicans took the my way or the highway approach President Donald Trump had stated on numerous occasions he would veto any bill that crossed his desk that did not meet Republican policy objectives.

The funding fight had gotten more strenuous as the TSA went unfunded, agents missed paychecks, and airport security lines started to increase during a busy spring break season. President Trump had even de used to send his unskilled ICE agents to stand around and give the appearance he was doing something.

Democrats had repeatedly offered clean bills to fund TSA but Republicans repeatedly voted against them, that was until March 27th. 

What caused this change?

As congress started to feel the heat from their constituents, it seems as if Republicans were feeling most of that pressure and it did not help things when they lost a couple special elections, with one notable race in particular - the district that contains the president’s resort home in Florida. This caused the president to make a proclamation that he would act without congressional action and pay TSA agents, despite constantly saying Democrats need to acquiesce.

Why does this matter?

Because Republicans quickly voted shortly afterwards to vote on a funding deal minus the funding for ICE, essentially handing Democrats a win but doing one more and proving Republicans were using the TSA as a political football. It also did not help that Trump blew up the GOP’s bargaining chip by saying he would fund the TSA, especially when he shot down a bipartisan deal earlier negotiated by Senate Majority Leader John Thune.

If Trump could find the TSA, why did he not do that from day one unless he and Republicans cynically thought voters would blame Democrats for the long lines at airports. Once they started to experience the political realities and Trump said he would pay the agents, Republicans no longer had a reason to hold out against Democrats’ demands. 

To the Democrats’ credit, they did not chicken out like they usually do and instead left that to Republicans and Trump, who has stayed true to his most damning moniker as TACO, which stands for “Trump Always Chickens Out.”

Now that this current funding fight has moved on to the next stage, who knows what each side will do. Democrats will probably continue to insist on reforms for ICE while Republicans will claim Trump acted decisively and won for the greater good.