26 MICHAEL WOLFF f SIEGE 27 shutting down the government would sweep that approach right off the | he took stock of the Trump reality: “There simply is not going to be a Wall, table. ever, if he doesn't have to pay a political price for there not being a Wall” The White House, quite behind Trump's back, was aggressively work- If the Wall was not under way by the midterm elections in Novem- ing to pass the appropriations bill and avoid a shutdown. The vice presi- ber, it would show Trump to be false and, worse, weak. The Wall needed dent gave Trump the same assurance he had been given previously when to be real. The absence of the Wall in the spending bill was just what it a budget had been passed without full funding for the Wall: Pence said the seemed to be: Trump out to lunch. Trump’s most effective message, the bill provided a “down payment” for the Wall, a phrase whose debt-finance forward front of the Trump narrative—maximal aggression toward ille- implications seemed to amply satisfy the president and which he repeated gal immigrants—had been muted. And this had happened without him with great enthusiasm. Marc Short, the White House director of legisla- knowing it. tive affairs, and Mick Mulvaney, the director of the Office of Manage- Sodiedt ment and Budget, in a joint appearance in the White House briefing room that Thursday, shifted the debate from the Wall to the military. “This bill The night of the twenty-second, the Fox News lineup—Tucker Carlson, will provide the largest year-over-year increase in defense spending since Laura Ingraham, and Sean Hannity—hammered the message: betrayal. World War II,” said Mulvaney. “It'll be the largest increase for our men The battle was on. The Republican leadership on the Hill, along with and women in uniform in salary in the last ten years.” the donor class, stood sober and pragmatic in the face of both political realities and the prospect of unlimited billions in government spending— i with, certainly, no illusions