He threatened scores of lawsuits but dropped them. He declared he would never settle but did. The press covered the threats and announcements, while the retreats months or years later got little coverage.

Winning the presidency seriously upset his formula. Results could be measured, even if he lied about them. (Did he pass a new health-care bill or not?) His settlement of the Trump University lawsuit was now front page news. His bullying and grandiosity didn’t work with allies, who didn’t agree to his demands (e.g., pull out of the Iran deal, cave to his excessive trade demands). Foes quickly figured a pompous fool could be satisfied with photo ops and red carpets (or a glowing orb or two).

AD

AD

What happened when he didn’t get his way because his objectives were absurd or he lacked the skill to achieve them? He folded, made excuses or just plain lied. Retreat on trade demands but sign a barely distinguishable NAFTA 2.0. Sign funding bills without funding for the wall and claim you’ve already built part of it. Demand North Korea denuclearize and then insist the threat has disappeared after a photo op. Declare that Bashar al-Assad’s poison gas bombings are unacceptable — but then do nothing after a few pin pricks and signal the United States is leaving Syria. Threaten to “close the border” and, of course, don’t.

It should therefore come as no surprise that Trump and his Senate GOP allies are folding on the shutdown this time around. The Post reports: “The Senate prepared Wednesday to pass a short-term spending bill that would keep the government open through the New Year but deny President Trump the money he wanted for his border wall — a stark retreat for Republicans in their final days in control of Congress.” The whole fight is of course the result of another empty threat — to get Mexico to pay for the wall.

There is no spinning this humiliating defeat. The short-term spending bill will take us into the new Congress, when the Democratic House will certainly not give him his cockamamie wall no matter how “artistically designed” it is. This is “a major defeat for Trump on his signature issue” and “an abandonment of his stance from a week ago, when he claimed he would be ‘proud’ to shut down the government to get his wall money.”

AD

AD

Speaker-to-be Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) knows full well she will be able to call Trump’s bluff, over and over again. Our foreign allies and foes need only think of some graceful exit from the corner Trump paints himself into — and then celebrate their wins. Trump can take his ball and go home (e.g., the Paris accord, the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action), but these are not “tremendous deals”; they are foreign policy by temper tantrum. There is no inherent value in ripping up a deal if you cannot replace it with something better (e.g., Obamacare).