Did the networks get played? Donald Trump said nothing new Tuesday night when he cut into prime-time programming on a half-dozen major networks to address the nation from the Oval Office. The president had been expected to raise the stakes in his ongoing battle with Democrats over his “good, old-fashioned border wall”—the unnecessary barrier over which he’s shut down the federal government. Perhaps, commentators speculated, Trump would declare a national emergency, mobilizing military resources to build the wall, and inviting a high-stakes legal fight over his use of executive powers.

Instead, Trump doubled down on the same false and misleading claims he’s been making for close to a month; again maligned undocumented immigrants as mostly violent criminals; and blamed Democrats for the impasse in negotiations that have dragged into their third week. “Democrats in Congress have refused to acknowledge the crisis,” Trump said slowly, reading with some difficulty from a teleprompter. “The federal government remains shut down for one reason and one reason only: because Democrats will not fund border security.”

If there was a defining feature of the nine-minute address, it was repetitiveness. As he’s done since the day he launched his campaign for the presidency, Trump described the southern border as a vector for drugs and criminals, illustrating his talking points by referring to specific victims who had been murdered or dismembered. “So sad,” he said. “So terrible.” As the White House has previously argued, Trump described the situation at the border as a “humanitarian crisis” that only his administration can solve.

“This is a humanitarian crisis—a crisis of the heart and a crisis of the soul,” he said, adopting his signature scowl. “This is a choice between right and wrong, justice and injustice.” The border wall, he reiterated, was necessary to address both issues.

Conspicuously, the president gave little mention to the 800,000 government workers caught up in the loggerheads, nor did he say whether he would declare a national emergency to get the wall built without Congress. Obviously, such a proposal appears to be plainly unconstitutional, as even the National Review’s David French—who actually supports a border wall like the one Trump has lobbied for—observed earlier Tuesday. “The president does not have the constitutional or statutory authority to unilaterally declare an emergency under these facts, seize private land, and spend money to build a wall,” French wrote in a blistering dismissal of the notion. “If President Trump attempts to defy the Constitution and federal statutes to use the military to seize land and build a wall without proper congressional appropriation, he’ll commit a grave abuse of power.” Other conservatives, including several prominent Republican lawmakers, have also said in recent days that they would not approve such an abuse of the president’s executive authority.

Perhaps that is why Trump, who has reportedly seen the nuclear option as an increasingly appealing move, ultimately backed down. Instead, Trump announced during his address, he will meet with Democratic leadership Wednesday to continue negotiations.

Democrats have so far appeared to have the upper hand on Trump, who claimed ownership of the shutdown before it even began, and who has seen his negotiating position weaken amid Republican frustration, growing concern about the impact of the impasse on government employees and taxpayers, and a litany of bald-faced lies that have torpedoed the little credibility the administration had on the matter.

In his televised address Tuesday, and a coming trip to the border Thursday, Trump is looking to gain as much leverage as he can. But the moves don’t amount to much more than empty theatrics—the kind that have backfired on Trump already, and have so far failed to get Democrats to budge. The next time he attempts such a stunt, at least, perhaps the networks won’t be so easily fooled.

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