In a friendly softball interview with Democratic Delaware Senator Chris Coons during her 12:00 p.m. ET hour show on Friday, MSNBC anchor Andrea Mitchell demanded that Democrats only vote to keep the government open if they extract an immigration deal “written in blood” from Republicans.
“Well, to be blunt, given the lack of trust....what kind of guarantees would Senator Schumer and the rest of you Democrats demand in order to proceed with a cloture vote and do a short-term three or four-day continuing resolution?,” Mitchell asked Coons. She continued: “Because you have to almost get it written in blood to be sure that the President won’t change his mind or Mitch McConnell will go ahead with it.”
Leading off a panel discussion later in the program, Mitchell asked The Atlantic’s Senior Editor David Frum: “How do they get a commitment that they can believe from this president that if they support averting the shutdown, they can then get this deal next week or later?” Frum proclaimed: “Who would be such a dupe as to believe a commitment from Donald Trump?” He smugly added: “Certainly not Chuck Schumer, who I think is going to try to dupe the President.”
Frum, the author of a new Trump-bashing book, went on to rant:
It’s worth noting here, just to take a step back, united Republican government for the first time in more than a decade, everything is working worse. There’s no budget, there are no hearings. The legislative process of the United States, as terrible as it was in the past, I think, has reached a new low of chaos that impinges on the military, has to embarrass and surprise everyone.
Daily Beast Politics Editor Sam Stein chimed in, blaming the entire budget impasse on the President:
Also, Schumer’s been down this road before. I mean, remember, the origins of this entire standoff was that he and Pelosi went to the White House, thought they had a deal with the President to resolve a DACA mess that he himself created, Trump created, and then that deal was broken. And so that’s why we find ourselves in this situation, is that one deal, one commitment was broken by the President. So I can’t imagine that Chuck Schumer shows up and gets an assurance from Trump that he supports a deal because he’s already broken that assurance once.
Rounding out the liberal punditry, The Guardian’s Sabrina Siddiqui touted: “Well, there’s a new Washington Post/ABC News poll out showing that the public is more likely to blame Trump and Republicans by a 20-point margin than they are Democrats.”
