The Artless Dealer: It’s New Year’s Eve and rain is expected as the ball drops in New York’s Times Square.

   The President is now unabashedly blaming Democrats for the government shutdown, even though he had said he would gladly “take the mantle” if he doesn’t get his southern border wall. He tweeted, “No thanks to the Democrats who left town and are not concerned about the safety and security of Americans!”

  He even whined that president Obama has a wall and he doesn’t. “President and Mrs. Obama built/has a ten foot Wall around their D.C. mansion/compound. I agree, totally necessary for their safety and security. The U.S. needs the same thing, slightly larger version!”

  The President is expecting the Democrats to come to himto make a deal. He doesn’t know he needs to go to them because they are exercising their new power in taking over the House of Representatives. They plan to offer a spending bill at the end of the week to get the town working again.

  Maggie Haberman and Sheryl Gay Stolbergwrite in The NY Times, “What the president who campaigned on his ability to cut deals has not done, nine days into a partial government shutdown over his signature campaign issue, is reach out to Democratic congressional leaders to strike one.”

  They report that he is on the phone promising Republican stalwarts in Congress and conservative talk hosts that he will not back down. He will not accept a deal that doesn’t give him his border wall. Trump is betting his presidency on this.

Exit Interview:Trump’s departing Chief of Staff John Kelly gave a two-hour interview to the Los Angeles Timesin which he said the staff often stopped Trump from doing things that were illegal and that if he made bad decisions, it wasn’t because he was not informed. “It’s never been: The president just wants to make a decision based on no knowledge and ignorance,” Kelly said. “You may not like his decision, but at least he was fully informed on the impact.”

  Kelly spent 46 years in the Marines, retiring as the military’s longest-serving general.

  Kelly said Trump often wanted to push the boundaries of the law, asking, “‘Why can’t we do it this way?’” They had to explain the law to him.“If he had said to me, ‘Do it, or you’re fired,’” Kelly said he would have resigned.

  The retired general also revealed that despite Trump’s speeches and the shutdown, he really gave up on a solid border wall a long time ago. “The president still says ‘wall’ — oftentimes frankly he’ll say ‘barrier’ or ‘fencing,’ now he’s tended toward steel slats,” Kelly said. “But we left a solid concrete wall early on in the administration, when we asked people what they needed and where they needed it.”

  Asked why he stayed 18 months in a brutal job despite deep differences with the president, Kelly chalked it up to a sense of duty. “Military people,” he said, “don’t walk away.”

Spy vs. Spy:Russia has arrested an American citizen and accused him of being a spy. A man named Paul Whelan was arrested during what the Russians called “an espionage operation.” This might be payback for the US arrest of the Russian national Maria Butina.

The Roundup:South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham says President Trump is backing off his order to immediately withdraw 2,000 troops from Syria and do it a little more carefully. — Lower corporate tax rates have caused American companies to bring home half a trillion dollars they had stashed overseas, but the rate of repatriation is slowing. — Kim and Kanye bought a $15.5 million condo in Miami Beach. — Yosemite Park has closed two campgrounds because the bathrooms are closed during the government shutdown and you know … well … shit happens.  

Goodbye 2018: As the year ends, we’d like to thank the following for making it a great year for The Rooney Report:

   Brett and Bart Kavanaugh,Christine Blasey Ford,Michael Cohen, Michael Flynn, Robert Mueller, Paul Manafort, John Kelly, Gen. James Mattis, Rudy Giuliani, The National Enquirer, Les Moonves, Harvey Weinstein, Pete Davidson and Ariane Grande, The Wall, Brexit, Theresa May, Meghan Markle and that guy she married, “Baby, It’s Cold Outside,” Mohammed bin Salman, The President’s gut, The Witch Hunt, Facebook, romaine, Jim Acosta, Melania and “I really don’t care, do u?”, Don Jr. and Eric, The Shutdown (3), Ronan Farrow,  Anonymous, The Perjury Trap, Ryan Zinke, Bob Woodward, “Saturday Night Live”, The Enemy of the People, Kim Jong-un, Omarosa, The Space Force, Stormy Daniels, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, Tronc, The Russian Honey, Scott Pruitt, Novichok, The Muslim ban, Roseanne Barr, Trade Wars, Roy Moore,  The Deep State,  Kilauea, Charlie Rose, The Nerd Prom, Bill Cosby, Parkland Students, The Bomb Cyclone, “Crisis Actors”,  Black Panther, The House of Horrors.  And last, a big shoutout to “Individual-1.”

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