With three Atlantic City bankruptcies to his credit, Donald Trump has demonstrated a shaky grasp of the casino industry. But even Trump, the business blunderer, should know that a gambler on a losing streak should quit before he pawns the gold watch that he inherited from his father.

But when it comes to immigration and his Ego Wall, Trump never tires of the losing.

A rational politician would have stopped demonizing migrants coming over the border after the Democrats won their biggest midterm congressional victory since Watergate. But Trump persisted with the losing through a 35-day government shutdown that proved that temper tantrums work better in infancy than in the White House.

Now with even congressional Republicans defecting, Trump’s beautiful, solar-powered, see-through Wall downsized itself into 55 miles of functional fencing.

Instead of moving on as Congress voted Thursday night to fund the government through September, Trump took as his inspiration John Belushi’s battle cry in Animal House, “Nothing is over until we decide it is! Was it over when the Germans bombed Pearl Harbor? Hell no!”

With the supine Mitch McConnell as his mouthpiece, Trump announced that he will declare a bogus national emergency to secure full funding of his wending wall. So what if a recent CBS News Poll found that 66% of Americans oppose this desperation ploy? It just proves that Trump is the only political leader this side of Theresa May who can turn a retreat into a rout.

There is no way that this ends well for Trump.

In the days ahead, the House Democrats are certain to pass a resolution rescinding Trump’s assertion of emergency powers over the federal budget. Under the 1976 National Emergencies Act, McConnell then will be forced to bring the resolution to the Senate floor for a prompt vote. Even though Senate Republicans tend to get the vapors at the thought of crossing Trump, this time there likely would be enough Republican defectors for the resolution to easily pass.

At that point, Trump would face a choice: fold his hand or issue his first veto rejecting the bipartisan resolution? A veto would enrage not only Democrats but also tradition-minded congressional Republicans worried about the long-term implications of ceding so much power to a president. And my guess is that, at every moment of this ersatz crisis, Trump would be shedding political support like dandruff.

This being America in 2019, Trump’s misuse of the federal emergency powers would eventually end up in front of the US supreme court. This case would test whether the purported strict constructionists making up the court’s majority believe more in the spending powers granted Congress under the Constitution or in slavish loyalty to a mercurial Republican president.

As a heedless horseman of history, Trump is not expected to know anything about the times that prior presidents battled with Congress over spending powers. But maybe somebody could have told Trump that the White House always loses.

Presidents as far back as Thomas Jefferson asserted a power called “impoundment” to avoid spending every penny approved by Congress. But Richard Nixon, enthralled with the divine right of presidents, withheld during his presidency more than $50bn slated for social welfare programs that he judged wasteful. As a weakened Nixon faced a pounding over Watergate, Congress passed legislation banning presidents from using impoundment.

The Iran-contra scandal that marred the last years of Ronald Reagan’s presidency was rooted in congressional legislation that banned military aid to the rebels fighting the Sandinista government in Nicaragua. To get around this assertion by Congress of its funding powers, Reagan allowed Oliver North, running a rogue operation from the White House basement, to illegally divert money from a secret arms-for-hostages swap with Iran to the contras.

With the aid of Newt Gingrich, Bill Clinton won passage in 1996 of legislation giving a president a line-item veto over each budget item in appropriations. The Supreme Court overturned the line-item veto in 1998 because it unduly limited the powers of Congress. As Justice Anthony Kennedy pointedly stated in the majority opinion, “Failure of political will does not justify unconstitutional remedies.”

In Trump’s case, he is resorting to unconstitutional remedies to justify the failure of Congress to embrace his fantasy life. The only emergency facing America is the tragic mistake that the voters made on November 8, 2016.