I don't think any serious person doubts President Donald Trump's authoritarian tendencies. He fantasizes about suppressing press freedoms, among other civil liberties. He sees kinship with dictators-in-waiting in the Philippines, Turkey and Egypt. He believed evidently that the president is like an absolute monarch, having said he thought being chief executive of the U.S. government would be easier than being a beauty pageant impresario and reality TV star.

But having authoritarian inclinations is one thing. Being a competent and determined authoritarian who carefully calculates his moves, and who sees reality with clear eyes without deceiving himself with his own rhetoric, is another. After 100 days, we can see this presidency is almost entirely in name only. What you see is all there is to see. Donald Trump's is a hollow presidency.

There are no principles behind the actions. There are no values beneath the statements. Trump's politics are gestural. His thinking is symbolic. His remarks are reactionary and contingent. He is indeed a thoroughgoing salesman. What the product is doesn't matter. Who's buying it doesn't matter. How he's selling it doesn't matter. Why he's selling it doesn't matter. All that matters is getting the mark to believe everything he says is true. All that matters is getting to yes. Now.

As Trump told John Dickerson when the "Face the Nation" host asked if he stood by his debunked accusation that President Obama bugged Trump Tower: "I don't stand by anything."

He added: "You can take it the way you want."

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But when he gets to no, he has had during his lifetime the privilege to rationalize failure and the financial means to sue anyone who disagrees publicly. That was fine while head of a private global conglomerate whose principle asset is the brand value of his name. But such pathological thinking is deadly while head of a major political party whose actors rely on him not to derail budget negotiations, as he did last week, by changing his mind via tweet.

In short, the Republicans in Congress can't trust him. USA Today's Jill Lawrence brilliantly summed up their conundrum this way: "Can you rely on your negotiating partner to be consistent, to not leak or tweet or make counterproductive headlines, to be truly interested in a win-win outcome and understand what that will take?" Um, no.

That was obvious to congressional Republicans over the weekend. On Sunday, leaders of both parties announced a bipartisan agreement for a $1 trillion bill to keep the federal government running through the end of the fiscal year in September. If this president were as tough as he says he is, he would veto the bill. He won't, of course, and because he won't, the president's supporters should reconsider the faith they have put in his reputation as a master negotiator.

Here's what the Republicans got: more money for the Pentagon and for border security. Here's what the president got: nothing.

The Democrats, however, made out like bandits.

Trump called for funding a border wall. This bill provides no funding. It expressly forbids any funding used for border security (repairs, staffing and technology) be used for a wall. White House officials in the early weeks of the Trump administration said they had authority under a 2006 law to begin adding on to a border barrier that already exists. This new spending bill kneecaps that authority.

More: Trump wants to defund sanctuary cities. This bill says no. He wants a "deportation force." No, again. He wants savage cuts to the Environmental Protection Agency. He got 1 percent. His budget called for massive cuts to domestic spending. Instead, he got increased spending, even for scientific research. He wants $30 billion more for the Pentagon. He got less than half that amount.

And more: The Democrats fought off 150 GOP "poison pills," like weakening environmental regulations. They essentially humiliated Attorney General Jeff Sessions by extending an Obama policy barring the Justice Department from interfering with state marijuana laws.

And still more: Trump backed away from his threat to withhold subsidy payments to insurance companies under the the Affordable Care Act. That might be seen as caving to the Democrats, but the Democrats never made the demand, because they did not have to. If the president had made good on his promise, he'd have single-handedly sent the health care system into a death spiral.

According to news reports Monday, the Democrats were surprised by how easily they extracted concessions, but that is almost certainly a coy statement. The Democratic leadership, especially House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, has had Trump's number.

Pelosi has consistently described Trump as weak. All talk, no walk. She was right. The Republicans know it. But as long as Trump's image as a tough guy prevails among Republican voters, there's not much the GOP establishment can do to prevent the Democrats from continuing to extract concessions. Trump says concessions now put him in a better position in the fall, but that's is almost certainly magical thinking. By then, the House will be focused on 2018. The last thing Congress will want is shutting down the government.

The GOP was in disarray before Trump. With him, unity is impossible. The Democrats, meanwhile, enjoy unprecedented support in opposing an unpopular president who represents a minority of Americans. You could argue that Trump the Tough Guy President is getting played for a chump – by both parties.