Eighteen months into his presidency, with the clock ticking, everyone else may be waiting for the master negotiator to deliver but Donald Trump isn’t even pretending anymore. “The Art of the Deal” is now a relic from his real estate career. Why fix things through painstaking compromise when the public will know that both sides gave in and no one got a clean win?

It’s clear from his record that deregulating, executive actions, judicial nominations and cinematic summits with world leaders are President Trump’s preferred routes to accomplishments. The grueling work of assembling coalitions, making concessions, bridging divided GOP factions or -- Lord forbid -- reaching across the aisle are simply not endeavors in which Trump chooses to invest his time. Plus, building trust, keeping your word and giving ground are weak and boring. The fight is much more energizing, even when it leads to threats against Harley-Davidson. “He's on permanent offense," former House Speaker Newt Gingrich told the Weekly Standard last year. "He gets up in the morning, figuring out, how am I going to stay on offense?"

Promises of repealing and replacing Obamacare, unveiling a massive infrastructure plan, passing protection for Dreamers, a new Iran deal, bilateral trade deals to replace those broken by a withdrawal from the TPP and a threat to dissolve NAFTA, a bump-stock ban -- all die off or are relegated to a vague promise of something that’s happening “quickly,” sometimes in “two weeks,” when “we’ll see what happens.”

Sure, Trump can tout the tax reform law Congress passed in December. Though Republican leaders hold press events to celebrate its results, they find the president uninterested in talking about it much. But the tax bill passed because Republicans in Congress had had several drafts lying around in filing cabinets for decades and cobbled together a consensus package for their own political survival. After the health care failure, they simply had no choice, and Trump cannot take credit for pulling the tax package over the line.

On Wednesday, Trump issued an all-caps command to GOP lawmakers: “HOUSE REPUBLICANS SHOULD PASS THE STRONG BUT FAIR IMMIGRATION BILL, KNOWN AS GOODLATTE II, IN THEIR AFTERNOON VOTE TODAY, EVEN THOUGH THE DEMS WON’T LET IT PASS IN THE SENATE. PASSAGE WILL SHOW THAT WE WANT STRONG BORDERS & SECURITY WHILE THE DEMS WANT OPEN BORDERS = CRIME. WIN !”

Hours later, House Republicans -- following another collective, post-tweet eye roll -- rejected the bill by a vote of 301-121, the kind of embarrassing defeat usually not permitted to occur on the House floor. But it was time to put themselves out of their misery, in bold type. After all, it had been another all-caps week, the familiar rollercoaster of Trump flying up and down and all around, without anyone knowing where he will decide to end the ride. One week before, he seemed interested in a bill when the family separation crisis his administration started exploded into the headlines. Trump visited the GOP House conference and told them that they should pass a bill, either one, and that he was behind them “1000 percent.” He acknowledged devastated children were politically harmful. “We have to figure this out,” he said. “It’s a sad situation.”

But members knew that Trump’s lengthy speech didn’t amount to much of a commitment and grumbled that without his support for one specific bill they couldn’t build momentum behind either. Still they plowed ahead, as coverage of crying toddlers and outrage from former first ladies consumed the debate. Then, 72 hours later, Trump took another turbulent, nausea-inducing turn and tweeted:

“Republicans should stop wasting their time on Immigration until after we elect more Senators and Congressmen/women in November.” Republicans kept plowing, having long ago stopped screaming with every corkscrew turn. In the days since, Trump continued talking up immigration as a great election issue, admitting there was no rush to solve such problems.

Without a legally sound fix for family separation, or DACA protections that nearly 80 percent of voters support, GOP lawmakers are also facing voters who want to know what great deal Trump’s tariffs will produce. Many members suspect there is no plan.

Two House Republicans who represent rural districts said they have “been asked for patience,” and both predicted Trump would soon have to relent. “In another two months or 90 days this will probably turn out to be just like the issue with the kids at the border,” said one.

After Trump blew up the G-7 meeting in Canada, Sen. Ben Sasse questioned whether the president intends to create any new deals. “If the president is actually serious about leading the expansion of a G-7 no-tariff, free-trade agreement, that’s tremendous, tremendous news. ... I would happily carry his bags to every single meeting of those negotiations.”

A deadline for a new NAFTA to pass Congress this year has passed. Stakeholders had hoped to secure an agreement before Mexico elects a new president this Sunday. The likely victor -- Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador -- like Trump, is a critic of NAFTA and seen as far less likely to come to agreement than President Enrique Pena Nieto has been.

Allied nations in the G-7 are anxious about what to expect of Trump at the upcoming NATO summit in July, where they anticipate he will resist pressure on Russia before his summit with Vladimir Putin days later, yet pressure them on Iran. The Trump administration wants Europeans to comply with punishing sanctions against Iran indefinitely, which -- free from the Iran deal -- is developing nukes. Though Trump withdrew from that agreement, one that held the regime in check on weapons development accompanied by sanctions relief, he is now touting his dalliance with North Korea, a nuclear armed state that has managed to crack the “maximum pressure campaign” by showing up in Singapore for a presidential summit the regime had sought for decades. That’s called a great deal -- for North Korea. By the way, the administration announced this week there is no timeline for any agreements with “Chairman Kim.”

Meanwhile, Trump has threatened to close the border, and shut the government down in late September, weeks before the midterm elections, if he doesn’t have his wall funding. He threatened not to sign the last spending bill, then signed it hours later, then lambasted it after conservatives like Laura Ingraham expressed horror at its price tag. Between now and then there’s a trade war that, he promised, should be “easy to win.”

Farmers, manufacturers, businesses large and small -- all seek stability and predictability. But President Trump doesn’t do either. He doles out chaos and shock. If you’re waiting on a deal, then have some patience. But he’s gonna have everyone's backs. 1000 percent.