The Bubble: 'Trump sold us out' say conservatives after deal with 'Chuck and Nancy'

Each week, USA TODAY’s OnPolitics blog takes a look at how media from the left and the right reacted to a political news story, giving liberals and conservatives a peek into the other’s media bubble.

This week, conservatives felt betrayed while liberals celebrated after President Trump cut a surprising deal with Democrats to extend the debt ceiling three months and fund relief efforts for Hurricane Harvey. 

Last week: Even disaster can’t bridge our partisan divide

From the right: ‘Trump sold us out’

Far-right radio host Mark Levin said Trump wanted to get back at the “RINOs” (Republicans In Name Only) so he decided to “lurch left and work with Schumer and Pelosi.” 

Levin slammed Trump for a lack of leadership and said, “he sold us out on DACA.” 

“That’s not what a leader does,” Levin said. “He doesn’t throw in with leftists because the clowns who lead the Republican party are clowns. How does that work?” 

“If any other Republican had done that, you would all be condemning him,” Levin told his audience. 

From the left: A ‘huge win for Democrats’ 

The agreement was an “extraordinary capitulation by Trump,” a “major humiliation for Paul Ryan and Mitch McConnell,” and a “massive victory for Democrats,” wrote the Daily Kos’ David Nir. 

Trump gave the Democrats “a fat stack of bargaining chips despite being in the minority.” 

“But had Trump not decided to cave (and who knows why he did, except perhaps to stick to it McConnell and Ryan), he could have forced Democrats to cash in some or even all of those chips in order to secure the billions that Texans need to recover from Harvey,” wrote Nir. “Instead, Harvey victims will get the help they need and Republicans will still have to come begging Democrats for votes in December to once again up the debt limit and keep the government operating.

From the right: Republicans need to treat Trump as the enemy

“If you don’t realize that Donald Trump is your opponent you are living in denial,” writes Ben Howe in an open letter to Republican lawmakers on Red State.Howe says Republicans have backed themselves into a corner after underestimating Trump’s “populist techniques” and that he turned to the Democrats out of anger at the GOP establishment. 

Because destroying you means destroying your agenda, and destroying your agenda means going straight to the Democrats to undercut you, and that’s exactly what happened. You want out of this? Then you need to give up on the idea that you will ever get what you want while Trump is president. 

From the left: Dems don’t have the stomach to play chicken with the debt

“Do people really think that Democrats would play games with the full faith and credit of the US government?” asked David Dayen in The Nation. “I simply don’t see them being that ruthless; this is a difference between the parties. Democrats generally aren’t interested in crippling the government, but that’s what they’d have to be willing to risk in order to succeed in the negotiations.” 

That said, Dayen says Pelosi and Schumer could use the debt-limit as leverage to get legislation helping DREAMers or to eliminate the debt ceiling entirely.  

From the right: Trump ‘gave the Democrats exactly what they want’

“The American people may think they elected a Republican government last November, but it’s increasingly hard to tell,” The Wall Street Journal‘s editorial board wrote in the wake of the president’s deal with Pelosi and Schumer. 

“Mr. Trump instead gave Democrats exactly what they want, which is to set up an even steeper fiscal cliff on debt and spending in December when Republicans hope to be focusing on tax reform,” the editorial said. “Mr. Trump may not like GOP leaders Paul Ryan and Mitch McConnell, but is he trying to elect Speaker Pelosi?”

From the left: The Donald-Nancy-Chuck romance won’t last 

Most Republicans aren’t panicking in the wake of Trump’s deal with “Chuck and Nancy” (as the president called the Senate and House minority leaders) because the love can’t last, wrote Slate’s Jim Newell. 

“Most Republicans are describing Trump’s agreement as the legislative equivalent of a total eclipse: a set of factors aligned in historically rare sequence—his interest in unity, his interest in getting the debt ceiling raised without drama, his personal pique with Republican leaders’ performance this year — that caused the president to arrive at this abnormal conclusion,” Newell wrote. 

My suspicion is that the era of camaraderie between Trump, Schumer, and Pelosi will last a matter of days. Trump will throw another bone to his base, and Schumer and Pelosi will condemn him.

Read more: 

Chuck Schumer recounts the art of Democrats’ deal with Trump

Trump endorses short-term debt-limit increase backed by Democrats

Trump defends dalliance with Democrats

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