When Will Trump Fire MAGA Mike? He Passed A Short Term Spending Bill To Keep The Government Open

If He Passes A Border Bill, Trump Will Pounce

Late yesterday afternoon, the House voted 314-108 to fund the government for another few weeks. Trump’s Shut It Down Caucus was not happy. 107 Republicans voted with MAGA Mike and 106 Republicans voted for Trump’s demands for a shutdown. All the MAGAt kooks and nuts voted for a shut down and Hakeem Jeffries gave MAGA Mike the whole Democratic caucus to counterbalance that. Among Republican crackpots who voted to shut it down were the troublemakers:

• Andy Biggs (R-AZ)

• Dan Bishop (R-NC)

• Lauren Boebert (R-CO)

• Tim Burchett (R-TN)

• Jerry Carl (R-AL)

• Andrew Clyde (R-GA)

• Eli Crane (R-AZ)

• Warren Davidson (R-OH)

• Byron Donalds (R-FL)

• Matt Gaetz (R-FL)

• Bob Good (R-VA)

• Paul Gosar (R-AZ)

• Mark Green (R-TN)

• Marjorie Traitor Greene (R-GA)

• Gym Jordan (R-OH)

• Anna Paulina Luna (R-FL)

• Nancy Mace (R-SC)

• Thomas Massie (R-KY)

• Mariannette Miller-Meeks (R-IA)

• Mary Miller (R-IL)

• Cory Mills (R-FL)

• Barry Moore (R-AL)

• Troy Nehls (R-TX)

• Ralph Norman (R-SC)

• Jay Obernolte (R-CA)

• Scott Perry (R-PA)

• Matt Rosendale (R-MT)

• Chip Roy (R-TX)

• David Schweikert (R-AZ)

• Elise Stefanik (R-NY)

• Bryan Steil (R-WI)

• Jeff Van Drew (R-NJ)

• Derrick Van Orden (R-WI)

I highlighted the names of members in purple who just jeopardized their reelections with this vote. The MAGA talking point is that the deal isn’t worth supporting because it was “Pelosi-esque.” Right after the vote, I saw versions of the term popping up on MAGAt social media sites. Lauren Boebert’s office: “Coloradans are struggling as they deal with the disastrous effects of Joe Biden and the Swamp’s inflationary spending. I didn’t run for Congress to stand by and watch out-of-touch politicians continue to sell out America. Rather than reining in the Swamp and clawing back wasteful federal spending, the CR kicks the can down the road and fails to make the necessary cuts that will prevent future generations from being saddled with mountains of debt. This Continuing Resolution is a slap in the face to every American suffering from Bidenomics, every American suffering from record high inflation, and every American that will suffer because their government decided to run up a $34 trillion dollar debt with no realistic plan to pay it back. Nancy Pelosi would be proud of this reckless, bloated spending bill that ensures federal spending remains at the levels she set during her reign as Speaker. The American people deserve better than a Democrat wish list that does nothing to help their pocketbooks, does nothing to secure our Southern Border or terminate the Biden Regime’s amnesty policies, and does nothing to address our out-of-control national debt.”

The shut down dates now move to March 1 and March 8. To get it by the MAGA-controlled Rules Committee, MAGA Mike brought the legislation to the floor under suspension of the rules, which requires a two-thirds vote (bipartisan support). That made it clear he was willing to stand up to the neo-fascists who ousted McCarthy for doing the same thing. It also made it clear that he was willing to make a deal with the Democrats. Blowhards Marjorie Traitor Greene and Chip Roy have been threatening to bring up vacate the chair resolutions.

Lobbyist-to-be Patrick McHenry, soon to be changing careers, told reporters that MAGA Mike “needs to widen the group of advisers he has. The loudest members of our conference should not dictate the strategic course of a smart majority— especially in the most complicated bits where those loudest voices are least likely to participate in the votes necessary… By us not executing the deal in December, we’ve cost the Defense Department four and a half billion dollars a month— out of an active choice by House Republicans. I think it’s a faulty choice. I think it’s a bad choice… To draw out the calendar doesn’t actually help produce political wins, and it’s not actually shown to create policy wins. I’m here for policy wins. If we keep extending the pain, creating more suffering, we will pay the price at the ballot box. At this point, we’re sucking wind because we can’t get past the main object in the road... We need to get the hell out of the way. Cut the best deals we can get and then get on with the political year.”

Earlier, the same bill passed the Senate 77-18, only 18 MAGAts giving in to Trump’s demands:

Next up: the Senate’s bipartisan border deal. Trump gave Mike Johnson the nickname MAGA Mike. If he passes the border deal, he’ll change that to RINO Mike. In great part, Trump’s campaign centers on chaos and dysfunction at the border. He doesn’t want that fixed— and his MAGA bootlickers have heard the message loud and clear. Putin ally Marjorie Traitor Greene has threatened several times that if MAGA Mike brings up a compromise bill that includes any aid to Ukraine, she’ll depose him.

Republican senators in support of the deal argue that the leverage of Ukraine aid has given them a unique opportunity to secure key border reforms from a Democratic administration, but the former president, who Johnson says he has consulted, is urging him to reject any legislation that isn’t “perfect.”

The situation leaves little space to operate for the Speaker, who retains a historically slim House majority and is already dealing with rumblings about a move to oust him.

The Speaker emerged from a White House meeting with President Biden and congressional leaders Wednesday— which Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO) said appeared designed to “strong-arm” him into accepting the Senate deal— remaining highly critical of its reported contents and renewing his calls for Biden to take executive actions at the border.

“If the bill looks like some of the things that have been rumored, of course it’s dead in the House, because it wouldn’t solve the problem,” Johnson said Wednesday on CNN.

Yet Johnson did not completely shut the door on the deal, saying that he needs to wait to see the text of any bill and could not answer questions about a hypothetical.

As he faces pressure on multiple fronts, Johnson insisted on Fox News: “No one is strong-arming me.”

…“The worst thing we could do is to give the appearance that we’ve done something on border security, to give the American people false hope and a false impression that we’ve done something that will make a difference,” Rep. Bob Good (R-VA), chair of the hard-line conservative House Freedom Caucus, said of the Senate border deal.

Democrats and the Biden administration, Good later added, “want to look like they care about the border then run out the clock and hope that he wins reelection so they never have to implement what they’re not going to implement anyway.”

The most important of the border deal critics is Trump, who posted late Wednesday on his Truth Social website that he expects Johnson to “only make a deal that is PERFECT ON THE BORDER.”

Fox News host Laura Ingraham said Wednesday night that the former president is “extremely adamant” that the Speaker should be against the deal and that the president can take executive action on the border without “some new bill.”

“President Trump is not wrong,” Johnson responded. “He and I have been talking about this pretty frequently.”

Republicans supportive of the deal in the Senate hope that Johnson will shift, and they point to other issues on which the Speaker has made a move.

…Johnson, for his part, said he is “not worried” about Greene’s threat to oust him.

But rejecting a Senate deal may be one of the few ways he has to build goodwill with the right flank.

In addition to rejecting calls from members of the Freedom Caucus last week to back out of a top-line spending deal with Democrats, Johnson also dismissed a last-minute pitch from the Freedom Caucus to bring up a vote on a border security amendment before passing a short-term stopgap funding bill Thursday. 

The pitched amendment would have been a response, in part, to the Senate deal, but would have been a drastic change in plans just hours before the scheduled vote.

Rep. Ralph Norman (R-SC) said that after Johnson’s rejection, he is worried that the Speaker might accept the Senate border deal.

“We wanted it part of the spending. He just didn’t do it,” Norman said.