He was always going to tweet through it. Donald Trump, American president, has worked himself into a corner, courtesy of some Artful Dealmaking in pursuit of his Big, Beautiful Middle Finger From White America Monument. But he has devised a new strategy this Wednesday morning, following the methods of Sun Tzu: Appear strong when you are weak, and think out loud on the Tweet Machine. Yes, we were treated to a miniature textual version of Trump's rally riffs, where he tries out the applause lines to see what gets the Red Hats whooping and hollering. The result was not a glowing advertisement for the notion the president's brain is firing on all cylinders.

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BUILD A WALL & CRIME WILL FALL! This is the new theme, for two years until the Wall is finished (under construction now), of the Republican Party. Use it and pray! — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 23, 2019

Now that's a slogan. Use it and pray! Let's see if it's taking off.

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BUILD A WALL & CRIME WILL FALL! — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 23, 2019

Ah. That's just the president again, two minutes later.



As a candidate in 2015, Trump started talking about The Wall early. His then-advisers recently told The New York Times they used it as a memory device so he'd talk about illegal immigration, which he does not actually care about. After all, he has always employed undocumented immigrants to work on his properties. He still does. He has no problem with people coming here and providing cheap labor for him to exploit, like many other wealthy white Republicans—and plenty of Democrats, too.

But you have to think Trump, with his primal cunning, also intuitively understood the potency of The Wall as a symbol of white resentment manifest. He certainly understood it once the crowds started chanting. It was a middle finger to the changing world outside, a bulwark to safeguard the citadel of White America. But it was just an image, a sales pitch, a bottle of snake oil, a Fyre Fest. He never intended to actually build it, likely because he never expected to actually become President of the United States.

Charlie Leight Getty Images

That's probably why Republicans, when they controlled both houses of Congress, didn't build it. It will not stop the flow of drugs, and it will not do a damn thing about a huge percentage of illegal immigration. (Plus, again, these people and their donors don't actually mind cheap labor.) Building it would be incredibly costly and difficult, as you'd have to seize land from Texan ranchers and Native American reservations. It's not a plan, it's a rhetorical device. Trump even turned down a deal last year for $25 billion (!) in Wall funding in exchange for granting a path to citizenship for the Dreamers—kids who are American in every way except on paper. This is, in most cases, the only country they've ever known. But they're also brown, and it's not about Building the Wall—it's about sending a message to the world about whose country this really is. It's about talking about The Wall, not building it.



Now the president staked out a position, however, he feels he must protect his relentless scam of a reputation as a Hard-Nosed Negotiator, and as an icon of sad masculinity to soothe the deep-seated psychosexual anxiety plaguing many of his followers. Really, though, he's just become a butler to the same talk-radio blowhards who dreamed up The Wall in the first place, and have decided to hold Trump to one of his few clear and coherent campaign promises.

Pete Marovich Getty Images

El Jefe postured about getting Wall funding in a December bill to fund the government, but quickly folded on his demand. Then Rush Limbaugh and Ann Coulter said bad things about him on the teevee, and for Donald J. Trump there is no worse thing. So he held a televised meeting with Democratic leaders Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer, and threatened to shut down the government unless he got his Wall money. He offered to take full responsibility for the resulting government shutdown, and assured them he wouldn't blame Democrats.

Look, you can watch. It's on video:

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Trump gives the Democrats the best soundbite they could possibly hope for: "Yes, if we don't get what we want...I will shut down the government. ... I will take the mantle. I will be the one to shut it down. I'm not going to blame you for it." pic.twitter.com/e4xbjlMvwj — David Mack (@davidmackau) December 11, 2018

Because there is video in which Donald Trump takes full responsibility for the government shutdown, most Americans blame Donald Trump and his Republican allies for the government shutdown. A majority of Americans also oppose The Wall, and today we learned his disapproval rating has ticked up to an all-time high of 57 percent. Just 40 percent approve. In another poll, he trails Nancy Pelosi by 12 points on a question of who's doing a better job handling the shutdown. 71 percent said a border wall is not worth the government shutdown. And then there's this:

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Majority of Americans want President Trump to agree to a budget without funding for a border wall, a new CBS News survey shows https://t.co/5CC62QGLKq pic.twitter.com/dyWAU2gqRw — CBS News (@CBSNews) January 23, 2019

Two-thirds of Americans want the president to fold, because they see what's right in front of their face: he shut down the government to cause a crisis he could use to fund his pet project which most people don't want. He is sinking, day after day. He has no leverage.

This has led Trump, the Artful Dealmaker, to rattle off an escalating series of desperate stunts. He floated declaring a national emergency and seizing non-appropriated funds to Build the Wall, which would have been a lawless and nakedly authoritarian act. He gave a primetime Oval Office address that did exactly squat. And most recently, he offered Democrats a deal wherein he'd get his $5.7 billion in Wall funding in exchange for granting temporary protections for the Dreamers.

Remember when he could have taken $25 billion and let these kids live in peace? Now, after the courts rejected his claim he can end the DACA program unilaterally, he is offering an extension on Dreamer protections that Democrats already have. He cannot end the program, yet his offer is...to not end the program. Artful Dealmaking strikes again. The new bill would have been rejected even if it had not included a number of "poison pills"—provisions inserted, likely by Santa Monica Gargamel Stephen Miller, with the express knowledge Democrats would not accept them, thereby killing the bill.

Miller sits in on a Trump Cabinet meeting. Alex Wong Getty Images

And that's the whole ballgame. The latest olive branch was in fact strictly performance. If you wanted to make a deal, why would you mess with asylum policies in a way you know Democrats won't accept? Everything that's going on is theater. It is action chosen based on how it will play on Fox News and talk radio, because the president does not believe he is President of the United States. He is president of the minority of Americans who support him. He assumes most of the 800,000 federal workers who aren't getting paid because of his shutdown stunt didn't vote for him, so he doesn't care about them.

But in a true testament to his political genius, even these pieces of theater didn't play well with The Base or the talking heads. Ann Coulter, who is now basically running the country, blasted his proposal as "amnesty" and suggested, “We voted for Trump and got Jeb!” Steve King, the public racist who is the embodiment of The Base's anti-immigration id, also went after the plan, as did the once all-powerful Breitbart, which nobody reads anymore. Trump is caught in a trap he laid himself, with the realities of running the country pressing in on one side and the expectations of a political base completely detached from empirical reality on the other. Based on his record, we know which way he'll go. Unfortunately, that means a lot of innocent people aren't going to get paid for a while.

Use it and pray!

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.

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