In a banner day for Nancy Pelosi and LaGuardia Airport, Donald Trump, American president, has released his hostages without securing a dime in ransom. After 35 days, the master dealmaker we elected to make deals just signed onto the same deal he had 35 days ago—the one that all parties agreed to, and which he was ready to sign until Rush Limbaugh and Ann Coulter started saying mean things about him on the television.

Speaking of, let's check in on those folks now that the president up and folded without getting any of the $5.7 billion he'd been demanding for his Big, Beautiful Middle Finger From White America Monument. First, Coulter:

This content is imported from Twitter. You may be able to find the same content in another format, or you may be able to find more information, at their web site.

Good news for George Herbert Walker Bush: As of today, he is no longer the biggest wimp ever to serve as President of the United States. — Ann Coulter (@AnnCoulter) January 25, 2019

Wow! Nice work tagging the guy who recently died there. While Bush the Elder did little to earn the outright canonization that greeted his death, this seems a little much. It is an intriguing window into the psychosexual anxiety plaguing this movement, however, which continually depicts its leader—a conspicuously out-of-shape man who does not exercise because he believes the human body stores a finite amount of energy throughout its lifetime—as a supreme physical specimen. Coulter is an outrage merchant and her posturing would not matter at all if she hadn't been running the country for over a month now. We'll see if it keeps mattering.

Elsewhere, other members of the conservative intelligentsia weighed in.

This content is imported from Twitter. You may be able to find the same content in another format, or you may be able to find more information, at their web site.

Political chess game continues. President Trump reopens government - a good thing. Gives Dems three weeks to make a border security deal. Reasonable. Advantage Trump today. — Bill O'Reilly (@BillOReilly) January 25, 2019

Huge news here. Did you know Bill O'Reilly is still alive?

In other news, the Moderate Republican Voices of Reason chimed in from the halls of the Senate with a classic blend of spineless evasiveness and Very Concerned Words.

This content is imported from Twitter. You may be able to find the same content in another format, or you may be able to find more information, at their web site.

Tepid reviews among Senate Republicans over Trump’s performance. Portman told me: “I’m not a big fan of shutdowns - I don’t think they’re good for anybody or provide leverage.” Collins on Trump: “I don’t believe that shutdowns are ever justified - and I wish this never happened” — Manu Raju (@mkraju) January 25, 2019

And then there's Lindsey Graham, the guy who went from saying Trump was a "kook" who's unfit for office to saying he should declare a national emergency to seize funds not appropriated by Congress to Build the Wall. This is an obvious violation of the Constitutions' separation of powers, a lawless and nakedly authoritarian act, but suddenly Graham thought the guy he once said was insane should carry it out. Very legal, and very cool. Naturally, Lindsey held the party line.

This content is imported from Twitter. You may be able to find the same content in another format, or you may be able to find more information, at their web site.

Lindsey Graham on Trump: “I think he’s won on the argument that we need barriers as part of border security plan. I think the shutdown is a vehicle to get it; it didn’t work.“ — Manu Raju (@mkraju) January 25, 2019

Notice how we're subjected to this intelligence-insulting dross about "barriers" and "fences" and "steel slats," after the president campaigned for close to two years on an unequivocal promise to build a 30-foot concrete wall. And it's that big middle-finger monument his fans want, not some Democrat-approved steel slats. Although having watched the last few years go by, they'd take a picket fence as long as it was emblazoned with the TRUMP emblem.

Anyway, that's where we at. We just flushed a month down the toilet because the president was afraid of Ann Coulter, who's now still hollering about him anyway after he took the deal that he could've gotten 35 days ago. Oh, and while the 800,000 federal workers will get backpay to cover this fiasco, the 1.2 million federal contractors who also missed paychecks may never see the money that was stolen from them. And we'll probably revisit this freak show in three weeks.

It will be fascinating to watch how the Red Hats react if Trump makes a deal for "border security" but no Wall. Is their allegiance to him? Is it to his white nationalism? And which is a better sign for the rest of us going forward, assuming Donald J. Trump is not the last authoritarian the Republican Party will put up for the highest office in the land?

Jack Holmes Politics Editor Jack Holmes is the Politics Editor at Esquire, where he writes daily and edits the Politics Blog with Charles P Pierce.

This content is created and maintained by a third party, and imported onto this page to help users provide their email addresses. You may be able to find more information about this and similar content at piano.io