After dealmaker Donald Trump torpedoed two deals he made to shore up DACA before the government shutdown, he floated a third deal that was dead on arrival with Democrats because it sought broad reductions in legal immigration. It's been quite a string for Trump, who lawmakers are now trying to sideline in pursuit of a bill that manages to protect Dreamers before the March deadline. The Washington Post writes:

Democrats have voiced fierce opposition to a White House plan, released late last week, that featured a path to citizenship for 1.8 million dreamers in exchange for $25 billion for his border wall and sharp cuts to family immigration visas. [...] Congress members, including some Republicans, said Sunday that the negotiations have gone too far afield ahead of a March 5 deadline after which 690,000 dreamers in an Obama-era deferred action program could begin to lose their protections from deportation. “It seems to me that the two important things to tackle right now . . . are to protect the dreamers and also to strengthen border security,” Sen. Susan Collins, a moderate Republican from Maine, said on CBS’s “Face the Nation.”

This is the magic of our dealmaker-in-chief—shooting down two deals that stood a chance of passing the Senate in favor of a deal that every person living in this universe knew was toast before the White House even floated it.

Seriously—has there ever, ever been a worse negotiator seated in the Oval Office? Trump even managed to tick off his white supremacist base. What kind of a politician alienates their base in pursuit of a deal that has a less-than-zero chance at succeeding?

Appearing after Collins on the same show, Reps. Will Hurd (R-Tx.) and Pete Aguilar (D-Calif.) — who have proposed a House bill to provide legal status to dreamers and bolster border security — agreed that addressing the legal immigration system in the negotiations over dreamers is implausible. “I still believe that a narrow bill is most important; the thing that we can get through our Congress, both houses, in the House and in the Senate,” said Hurd, who represents a district with more than 800 miles of border with Mexico. “Because the more things you add, you start creating coalitions of opposition. And so let’s keep this narrow.”

Um, just in case you didn't catch it the first time, Trump, the operative word is "narrow."

And if any such bill is going to have any chance at all, it's going to have be conceptualized and shepherded through by Congress, because Trump doesn't know what he doesn't know or even what he doesn't want. Lawmakers should just take their cues from Melania Trump and swat away Trump's hand any time it gets too close.