Trump just took the wrong hostage, proving he never actually learnt how Washington works

Hostage-taking has become an annual holiday season tradition in Washington, right up there with decorating a tree or lighting a menorah.

The modern legislative process, with all of its incentives to not work via an even more damaged political process, is so broken that the only way to get major legislation passed is by jamming a few bills through in the days before House members and senators want to get home to spend the holidays with their loved ones.

That means committee chairs, panel ranking members, rank-and-file grinders and backbenchers are all hostages of their respective leaders and whomever occupies the White House, since big deals typically come from the top of the food chain. 

It was so under then-President Barack Obama and the rather unseemly tradition has continued under Donald Trump.

The 44th president took a few hostages in his battles with Republicans, and the outgoing 45th has, too. Trump, in fact, held enough Democratic demands hostage that he triggered — then presided over — the longest federal government shutdown in American history during December 2018 and January 2019.

Trump and Republicans took most of the blame from the American people for that 35-day lapse in government funding, according to multiple polls. 

He concluded he did not want another during his term, even though his base praised his decision near the end of that shutdown to bypass Congress by declaring a national emergency at the southern border. That “national emergency” allowed him to tap Pentagon funds for his border barrier project, aides said at the time. 

Without the shutdown, Trump was not prepared to issue the emergency order, the same aides admitted two years ago.

It can be argued that the hostage-taking in 2018 and 2019 helped Trump further a campaign promise – at least in the eyes of conservatives. He went on to garner 74.2 million votes in last month’s election – an impressive 11 million more than he received in 2016.

So the hostage Trump tried taking during the current holiday legislative battle royale is curious: the National Defense Authorization Act.

The president demanded lawmakers — who have been working on separate versions of the bill, then an always-tough compromise version, for most of the calendar year — use it to repeal or drastically alter legal protections for social media companies he claims are censoring him and other conservatives. 

It’s all a part of Trump’s unproven claims of a “big tech” conspiracy to help Joe Biden defeat him and keep conservative messages off their platforms.

Aggrieved and acting even more impulsively than normal since Biden was projected as his replacement and as every state he lost has certified its election results, the president wanted payback on Facebook, Twitter and other social media firms.

A hostage he needed.

There were just two options: the NDAA, considered a must-pass policy measure, and a year-end spending measure.

Oddly, Trump chose the former. In so doing, he was trying to essentially kidnap and block a bill that is considered sacred by the conservative lawmakers that have mostly stood by his demands and falsehoods for a half-decade.

Not only did most House Republicans vote in favor of the measure this week, but they did so in numbers large enough to ensure the chamber would be able to override his threatened veto.

The president was never going to have much leverage on the defense bill, and he should have realized as much after four years dealing with Congress. If he really wanted Section 230 repeal or reform, the hostage to grab was always the omnibus spending bill. Federal spending is far less sacred to GOP members who routinely say Washington spends too much.

This avoidable misstep means he very likely could leave Washington for a Mar-a-Lago holiday vacation in the wake of a double embarrassment.

Marine One could ferry him from the South Lawn minutes after he has signed another omnibus spending bill. He loathes them, preferring to get the 12 annual appropriations measured one-by-one – so he can make demands and push back on favorite Democratic line items.

He also could arrive in South Florida having just watched hundreds of House and Senate Republicans vote to override his NDAA veto.

Trump badly bungled his Section 230 fight. This botched hostage-taking shows he never really tried to learn how Washington really works. 

It was, like so much of his term before, just another my-way-or-the-highway demand via tweet that left his party with little incentive but to defy an increasingly lame-duck president on his way out the door.