Have you ever wondered what the world would be like if Trump had lost his train of thought that day and instead gone off on a long riff about poor children in Africa and got the same kind of enthusiastic response? Could have happened, if the stories are true about the crowd being stuffed with people who were paid to just cheer and fill out the camera shots. And then maybe he’d have spent the next year hanging out with Pope Francis instead of Steve Bannon.

Anyhow, then it was on to the Republican primaries, during which Trump promised to deport all 11 million unauthorized residents in the country. (“We’re rounding them up in a very humane way, in a very nice way.”)

He appears to have given up on that one. Possibly because of his short attention span. We have been thinking of the attention span since Michael Wolff, whose Trump book is dominating the national conversation, claimed that the president’s habit of repeating himself every 30 minutes has now devolved to every 10 minutes.

No, no, not going there. Back to policy.

Right now, Congress is scrambling to try to keep the government running through the month, and the Democrats are ready to negotiate as long as the deal includes protection for the Dreamers. Those are the approximately 800,000 young immigrants who were brought to the country as minors and given protection under the Obama program called Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals. Trump rescinded it last year, but included a six-month delay that was supposed to give Congress time to work out a new plan.