[Hoot Gibson]

No you don't get to carve out a late breaking, weak and ill-conceived safe haven, which again was supposedly to ask how I expected Trump to secure wall funding, while playing the intellectual and barricade yourself up behind that smoke screen. Of course, I could never understand the Senate filibuster rule like you do, but if you or anyone else would care to know how I feel about it you might go to the thread I started on the subject and check it out. You might even notice the mention of Mitch McConnell there.

You've been chased all over the place during the course of this thread. I leave it up to others to decide which of us best developed topic, and stayed on topic. Like your Reagan quote, the message to which you were perfectly fine with holding others, but at the same time unwilling to comply to that standard yourself once called on it.

You started off saying Trump, at the beginning of his tenure, had a strong hand and should have forced Ryan and McConnell to capitulate. Not that he missed his best opportunity as you later characterized. But at least you've joined the rest of us in our belief that the President never had the opportunity to dictate terms. So where are we these days, do you want Trump to stomp these guys or work with them? Speaking of which, I believe Ryan and McConnell decoyed the President in taking up ObamaCare and Tax Reform in order to get us to the very juncture in time and circumstance in which we find ourselves. Why? Because as I and others on here continue to point out, with the power of trillions of dollars floating in the background, Dems and RINO's were never going quietly into that dark night. Further, with surety of the number of all those open Republican seats in their pocket, there is reason to suspect the forthrightness of Ryan's not so subtle point shaving performance as Speaker of the House. Lou Dobbs and Mark Levin and many others have said that Trump's Republican opponents saw the opportunity as acceptable collateral damage to the party. Hence, no wall and they hoped, no Trump.

But the underpinning of the opposition's premise in all of this is full of termites. No president should have to goad or cajole the US Congress to fulfill their constitutional prime mandate, which is to provide for the common defense. With the backing of most taxpayers, America spends something north of 500 billion dollars on defense annually. The very idea that those sworn to protect the interests and people of this land, would willfully plot a dereliction and by way of miserably weak cover choose to say that 5.7 billion more for a wall is untenable; A number which by way of practicality is a mere matter of appropriation, especially in the face of those carrying drugs and the now endless caravan and you name it, lined up to cross the border hundreds abreast, is the most existentially ridiculous and shameful blather in the history of governance. The USA is the first and only superpower to fall under threat of annihilation by liberalism, as far as I know. :dudecomeon:

It was a simple question, TRT. Obviously, it was too difficult for you to answer.

I was not the one who touted how tough Trump would be on illegal immigration and how he would "drain the swamp." I knew better but I still voted for Trump as the lesser of two evils. If you believed half of what Trump promised, then you should be more disappointed in his performance than I ever could be. I am generally satisfied with the job that he is doing but my expectations were not unreasonably high.