CNN legal analyst Jeffrey Toobin said Thursday that President Trump’s strategy amounts to this: cater to the base.

“I mean, he is gonna close down the government because Ann Coulter got mad at him. And that’s, you know, where we are on the budget side. And Mattis is a representative of a broad Washington consensus about military matters. He is not known as a particularly political person. But he’s out now,” Toobin said.



Coulter had gone after Trump in recent days over his initial cave on border wall funding as part of a deal to keep the government open. Trump eventually unfollowed Coulter on Twitter, and the President has now reinstated his demand that $5 billion for his border wall be part of a spending deal.

Watch Toobin on CNN: