Trump's latest rage-threat gives Democrats a big opening. One just took it.

[Celerity]

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2019/06/10/trumps-latest-rage-threat-gives-democrats-big-opening-one-just-took-it/?utm_term=.ad6d9060f60d

President Trump has spent the last half day frantically retweeting his propagandists, who are pushing the absurd deception that Trump’s new deal with Mexico is a massive and historic victory. In reality, the agreement — which averts Trump’s threatened tariffs — consisted mostly of things Mexico already agreed to months ago.

Trump is in a rage over this — he repeatedly fumed at the New York Times for reporting it — and now he’s amplifying the notion that he won enormous concessions from Mexico by claiming that Mexico has secretly agreed to another major provision that will be revealed at some unspecified future time.

This has come packaged with a threat: Trump just tweeted that if Mexico does not soon take formal steps to ratify that secret provision, “Tariffs will be reinstated!”

But this threat gives Democrats a big opening to grab control of this debate — both on the immigration and trade fronts, because this story intertwines the two, and more broadly to better engage with the colossal failures of Trump’s nationalism.

The two main provisions of the deal that Trump reached with Mexico are an expansion of a program in which asylum seekers trying to enter the United States wait in Mexico; and increased deployment of Mexico’s national guard to disrupt smuggling networks and try to stop migrants from Central America from reaching the southern border.

snip

[Skittles]

1. Beto's response is excellent

[Arkansas Granny]

2. Can you repeat his response or link to it?

[Celerity]

4. here

Beto O’Rourke’s good answer

Asked on ABC’s “This Week” to comment on Trump’s Mexico mess, former Texas congressman and 2020 Democratic presidential candidate Beto O’Rourke offered an answer that’s worth watching in full:

Link to tweet

Note that O’Rourke used this situation as a window into a much broader indictment of Trump’s nationalist agenda. He stressed that the threat of tariffs against Mexico is only serving to “jeopardize” our “most important trading relationship”; that this places at risk markets that our farmers have cultivated; and that they are already taking a beating from Trump’s trade wars with China.

Importantly, O’Rourke made the case that precisely the opposite approach — strengthened, reality-based international integration — is the answer both on trade and on immigration. O’Rourke called for trade arrangements in farmers’ and workers’ interests and for increased investments in Central America “to ensure that no family has to make that 2,000-mile journey.”

[Skittles]

6. Beto really REALLY understands the issue

and by the way, what would Jesus do? EXACTLY THIS.

[Marcuse]

3. This is just a rerun of a TV episode from 2017. "Trump plays hardball with Mexico"

We cannot say that anymore because if you are going to say that Mexico is not going to pay for the wall, then I do not want to meet with you guys anymore because I cannot live with that. I am willing to say that we will work it out, but that means it will come out in the wash and that is okay. But you cannot say anymore that the United States is going to pay for the wall. I am just going to say that we are working it out. Believe it or not, this is the least important thing that we are talking about, but politically this might be the most important talk about. But in terms of dollars – or pesos – it is the least important thing. I know how to build very inexpensively, so it will be much lower than these numbers I am being presented with, and it will be a better wall and it will look nice. And it will do the job.
[link:https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2017/politics/australia-mexico-transcripts/|

[Turbineguy]

5. Some wanker on CNBC this morning said

Trump had played the Mexicans "brilliantly".

It wasn't Putin.