When Donald Trump first hired Wilbur Ross as commerce secretary, he proudly told people the 80-year-old investment manager was a “killer,” reminiscing about Ross riding to his rescue several decades prior, when Trump failed to pay back the loans that financed his Atlantic City fiefdom. Ross, who was so excited about his new position of power that he commissioned a pair of $500 custom-made velvet slippers with the Commerce Department logo stitched on the toe, happily chatted to CNBC about his trips abroad with the president and his front-row seat to the “after-dinner entertainment” that was the bombing of Syria. Unfortunately for Ross, those heady early days quickly gave way to Trump treating him like a senile old man whose relatives suspect the nursing-home aides of committing elder abuse. In January, reports surfaced that the president had taken to “humiliat[ing] Ross in front of his colleagues,” questioning the commerce secretary’s “intelligence and competence,” and telling him such things as, “Your understanding of trade is terrible.” At one point, Trump reportedly informed Ross he “didn’t trust him to negotiate anymore,” telling others, “Wilbur has lost his step. Actually, he’s probably lost a lot of steps.” The situation presumably wasn’t helped by Ross’s alleged tendency to fall asleep in meetings (and to mop the resulting drool up with his tie). But where others might have assessed their diminishing status in the administration and decided it would be a good time to head for the exit, Wilbur apparently has another plan: to win Trump back.

Politico reports that despite the president’s penchant for lashing out at him during Oval Office meetings, embarrassing him in front of his colleagues, and initially leaving him out of a May trade delegation to China led by Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, Ross still thinks he can get back in Trump’s good graces, a dream few people see coming true. While the former private-equity mogul was likely heartened by being allowed to participate in China talks, a sign, one former administration official said, that the president “likes Ross even if he does not consider him a killer,” it’s “also a signal that they are not expecting a whole lot [on the negotiations front]. You would not send him if you were expecting real progress.”

Just weeks ago, the president announced that he was instructing the Commerce Department to figure out a way to save Chinese electronics-maker ZTE, which just one month prior Ross’s team had punished for violating U.S. sanctions—a turn of events that could charitably be viewed as the president undermining one of his own Cabinet members. Nor does it help that Trump has already reportedly pegged Ross as a weakling, a designation that’s difficult to shake in this White House: