No Shutdown End in Sight, and New Evidence of COLLUSION!

Now in its 19th day, the second longest (partial) government shutdown in our history shows no sign of ending anytime soon, with neither side apparently willing to give in to the other or to make a substantial compromise. That despite their public statements, including Trump‘s first Oval Office speech last night, which he was reportedly reluctant to give, and which, like the response from Pelosi and Schumer, came off as stilted and partisan and probably did little to change anyone’s mind. There is reportedly still a good chance that if Trump decides he can’t win the showdown with Dems and is losing congressional Republican support, his face-saving exit strategy will end up being to proceed with his threat to declare a national emergency over the border “crisis” and allow the government to reopen, even if, as expected, that move would be immediately challenged in court and likely at least temporarily blocked. Then Trump could claim to his base that he did everything possible to fulfill his campaign pledge to them (except of course that Mexico was going to pay for the wall!) and as usual blame everyone else (i.e. Democrats and liberal judges) for his failure. Except to his ever loyal base, Trump will probably end up looking worse and weaker as a result of this whole fiasco.

Meanwhile, back at the Mueller ranch, there are two big headlines. First is deputy AG Rod Rosenstein‘s announcement of his voluntary departure after confirmation of the new AG, expected next month, which likely signals that he believes the investigation is at a stage where it can safely proceed and hopefully conclude in the near future without significant interference. The other is an amazing inadvertent botched redaction in Paul Manafort’s court response to accusations of lying to Mueller’s investigators during his supposed cooperation. That revealed a previously publicly unknown meeting in Madrid between then campaign chairman Manafort and a Russian with intelligence agency connections, during which he reportedly shared internal campaign polling data. That is probably the clearest evidence revealed to date of actual campaign collusion with the Russians! Hopefully there is a lot more evidence that we still don’t know about but Mueller does. More indictments seem overdue already!