Fred Barnes: Republicans, tell Trump to ‘back down’ from shutdown

Political commentator and longtime editor of the recently shuttered “Weekly Standard” Fred Barnes has a message for Republicans in Congress ahead of the potential federal government shutdown — tell the president to pick his battles.

“The Republicans pay a price for believing that you can use the shutdown as an offensive weapon,” he told David Boze, filling in for KIRO Radio’s Dori Monson.

This, however, is misguided thinking on the Republicans’ part, according to Barnes. All that Trump is doing, he said, is giving Democrats “a badge of honor from their party every day that they deny the wall to President Trump” — so this shutdown won’t make much of a difference.

RELATED: The Weekly Standard shuts down after 23 years

“You’re not going to get rid of the Democrats blocking any money for the wall,” Barnes said.

Besides, he added, despite the dramatic talk, the shutdown is actually “very partial” and “has little impact.”

Instead, he said, the Republicans should convince Trump “to back down.”

“That’s the best thing that can happen now – then he can worry about the wall next year,” Barnes said.

Barnes does believe that the wall will eventually go up, but does not see that day coming very soon.

“It has a certain rationale,” he said. “Obviously it would provide better security for the southwest border than we have right now.

He compared this to the last time that there was a significant shutdown — October of 2013, when the federal government closed for over two weeks due to an inability to compromise on Obamacare.

“Of course that didn’t happen — it was never going to happen,” he said of Sen. Ted Cruz’s attempt to de-fund Obamacare. “And right now, Trump is in a similar situation.”

However, the problems in D.C. don’t just come from lack of agreement, in Barnes’ view. It was a bipartisan bill — the criminal justice reform bill signed by Trump this week — that became the subject of Barnes’ last “Weekly Standard” column. In the piece, he highlighted the “crime wave” in the 1970s and 1980s after “liberal [criminal justice] legislation” was passed, and posed his fears that history could repeat itself now.

“I worry that we’re going to see a lot of hard-core criminals get out too early, and crime to rise in this country,” he said, pointing out that these are “tough criminals” from federal prison and not inmates from “the local jail.”

As for the shutdown for Barnes himself this past week — the end of his 23-year-long weekly publication “The Weekly Standard” — he stayed relatively quiet. He did note that many media outlets have come up with ridiculous speculations on the reasons for the fold.

“These things are just far-fetched, so I guess my advice is, don’t believe these things that have been written about it,” he laughed.