Trump said he wanted a shutdown and now he’ll get one. This is on him and McConnell and no one else.

Let’s not forget that Trump already signaled that he wants a government shutdown.

either elect more Republican Senators in 2018 or change the rules now to 51%. Our country needs a good “shutdown” in September to fix mess!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 2, 2017

And a bipartisan DACA deal was struck on January 11:

A bipartisan group of six senators say they’ve struck an “agreement in principle” on legislation to provide a path to citizenship to young undocumented immigrants while bolstering border security and making changes to the legal immigration system.

Now they have to sell it—to a wide range of colleagues in the House and Senate, and most importantly of all, to President Trump.

Which Trump rejected:

On the day that Donald Trump ended Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA), he called on Congress to pass a legislative replacement for the Executive-branch program — one that would protect its 700,000 (former) beneficiaries from deportation. The president went on to suggest that if Congress failed to protect those Dreamers, he would “revisit the issue,” and, ostensibly, protect them himself.

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Congress now has 6 months to legalize DACA (something the Obama Administration was unable to do). If they can't, I will revisit this issue!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) September 6, 2017

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Congress now has 6 months to legalize DACA (something the Obama Administration was unable to do). If they can’t, I will revisit this issue!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) September 6, 2017

Four months later, a bipartisan group of senators announced that they’d reached consensus on a DACA replacement bill: Even though the president and GOP leadership had claimed to support legal status for Dreamers as an end in itself (and thus should have been prepared to support legislation that does nothing but that), Democrats nonetheless agreed to back a Dream Act that includes funding for Trump’s border wall, limits on the ability of legal U.S. residents to sponsor their adult children for immigration, and a reduction in diversity visas — provisions championed by Republicans and loathed by the progressive base.

On Thursday afternoon, Republican senators went to tell Trump the good news. The president then told them the bad news…

This bad news:

The Trump administration rejected a bipartisan Senate proposal to protect young undocumented immigrants from deportation, saying it needed more work.

Of course, that was the meeting where Trump once again made headlines with his open racism, which appropriately received the most attention. But even as Trump rejected it, the bipartisan deal picked up support from key Republicans:

A bipartisan immigration agreement is picking up the support of several additional GOP senators despite opposition from President Trump and the White House.

While concurrently, Republicans kept turning away from the deal Trump wants:

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell appears increasingly unlikely to have the votes necessary to pass a short-term patch to fund the government past Friday should the House advance the measure Thursday evening.

At least three GOP senators will vote against a continuing resolution to keep the government funded past Jan. 19, as Republican congressional leaders struggle to find the votes in either chamber to advance it. They will join a large chunk of Democrats who also say they will oppose the CR.

But because Trump opposes the bipartisan deal, McConnell won’t allow a vote on it:

Graham and Durbin plan to push forward with their bipartisan plan, but Senate Majority Leader McConnell has stated that he won’t consider any bill that doesn’t have Trump’s support, making him complicit in all of this.

So, a deal is there. It has increasing bipartisan support, it will resolve DACA, and it will keep the government open. If McConnell stood behind it, he certainly could get it over the 60 vote threshold. But he won’t even allow a vote on it. He stands behind the Continuing Resolution that is bleeding even Republican support, because that’s the one Trump wants. It’s his choice. It’s Trump’s choice.

Trump will get the shutdown that eight months ago he signaled he wants. It’s his. He will try to shift the blame, and the media will do their both sides bullshit, but this is on McConnell and Trump and no one else.

Ultimately, any deal will have to meet only two conditions: It will have to be bipartisan enough to get 60 votes in the Senate, and it will have to win the president’s approval. Until Congress manages to agree on who is doing the negotiating and writing the bills, we won’t know if it’s managed to meet the first condition.

As long as Trump is relying on the Republicans least interested in an immigration compromise to advise him, like Goodlatte and Cotton, no bill that meets the first condition will be able to meet the second.

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