Why Trump Rolling The Dice On A National Emergency To Get His Wall Is Not A Sucker Bet

There Are Only Two Ways Trump Loses. And He’s Got Decent Odds Of Winning Them Both.

We thought it was telling when the President announced a national emergency in order to get his wall, he went into great detail about how it would likely play out in the courts, but made no mention of the possibility Congress might block him from doing it. Because Trump’s biggest affront in declaring the emergency is to Congress: if Trump now does build his wall based on a unilateral declaration, which allows him to allocate funds to himself, nothing Congress does in the future will mean anything if the President doesn’t like it, or he just decides he wants to do something else. Yet Trump’s apparently so convinced Congress won’t stand up to him, he doesn’t even bother bringing them up.

But the 1st way Trump could lose is Congress stopping the very action he just took, and later passing legislation to take back some of the emergency powers they’ve ceded to the President over the years.

Quick refresher: the Constitution explicitly and exclusively gives Congress the right to raise and spend money; like for building a wall, or not. Also the Constitution makes the Legislative branch (Congress) equal to the Executive…