Ahead of a planned “major announcement” about the partial government shutdown and the crisis at the southern border, President Trump can still pull off a victory over the Democrats, Washington Post columnist Marc Thiessen argued Friday.
Approaching the one-month mark of the shutdown, which is the longest in the country’s history, Trump may finally put an end to it pending on what he says Saturday.
During the "Special Report" All-Star panel, Thiessen -- along with Washington Examiner chief political correspondent Byron York and Washington Post opinion writer Karen Tumulty -- weighed on the current state of the shutdown and offered some predictions ahead of the president’s announcement.
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Thiessen expressed hope that Trump makes the move that helps end the shutdown, which began Dec. 22.
“The president can actually win this fight if he continues to portray himself as the person who is willing to compromise,” Thiessen told the panel. "There was a Harris poll that showed that 72 percent of Americans want both sides to compromise on this, including 61 percent of Democrats and 76 percent of Republicans, so everybody on both parties want both sides to give.”
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He also pointed out that between Trump and the Democrats, only the president used the word “compromise” during primetime addresses earlier in the month. Thiessen added that it would be “wise” of the president to pursue a deal in order to win “persuadable voters in the middle” who can come to his side in 2020.
York insisted that both sides are trying to keep the shutdown story going as long as possible to keep the pressure on each other. Meanwhile, Tumulty predicted that Trump will declare a national emergency, which she called the president’s “off-ramp” in order to get funding for the wall or possibly a “compromise.”
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