Marc Thissen on Border Security Fight: ‘Insane’ That the Democrats ‘Are Unilaterally Giving Up Their Leverage’

‘Both sides have leverage because Trump is the president’

EXCERPT:

THIESSEN: “Both sides have leverage because Trump is the President. He has the pen, the veto pen and the signing pen. The Democrats have leverage because they have the power of the purse going into the new Congress. What’s insane here is that the Democrats — they have something that Trump really, really, really wants, which is money for the border wall. He desperately wants it. Only they can give it to him. In classic negotiating strategy, that's called leverage. When you have leverage, you use leverage to extract what the expert call concessions. When both sides do this, the experts say in negotiations, the result is compromise where both sides get something they want and give up something they don’t want to give up. That’s how the world works. What’s insane here is the Democrats are unilaterally given up their leverage saying under no circumstances will they fund Trump’s border wall. That’s insane. That is the giving away the chip they have. The thing that Trump wants that they could use to get all sorts of concessions from him on any range of policies. And they are just unilaterally giving up, which makes absolutely no sense.”

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