Dealing with a tantrum-throwing toddler

This is not how it's done successfully.

Headed for another defeat on his signature promise to make Mexico pay for a southern border wall, the president was frustrated after a briefing by Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen and others on details of the final deal to avoid a shutdown, according to officials involved in the discussions. Trump threatened not to sign the legislation, the officials said, putting the government on the brink of another damaging shutdown.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) was on the phone with Trump at least three times during the course of the nerve-racking day, pressing him to stay the course and asserting that Democrats had actually lost the spending fight, two people familiar with the conversations said.

“We thought he was good to go all morning, and then suddenly it’s like everything is off the rails,” said one senior Republican aide.

By midafternoon, however, Trump was back on board — agreeing to sign the legislation with the caveat that he would also declare a national emergency in an attempt to use existing government funds to pay for wall construction. It was an option that Republican leaders had urged him to avoid but eventually accepted as necessary to escape the corner in which Trump — and his party — were trapped.

  WaPo

You need to impeach this motherfucker.

The president is expected to declare the emergency and sign the bill Friday morning, a senior White House official said.

[...]

[F]ew Republicans, including the president’s closest allies, were pleased with the ending: $1.375 billion for fencing and other expenditures, plus an emergency gambit that many conservatives view as an executive overreach.

Yet for Trump, the negotiations were never really about figuring out how to win. They were about figuring out how to lose — and how to cast his ultimate defeat as victory instead.

[...]

When Shelby called Trump to brief him on the deal, he tried to sell the president on the idea that the $1.375 billion figure was merely a “down payment” on his wall, according to three people briefed on the call. The money will actually pay for just 55 miles of fencing, not a concrete or steel wall of the kind repeatedly promised by Trump.

[...]

In the House, Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) and Minority Whip Steve Scalise (R-La.) — Trump allies — wondered if they could get enough House Republicans to vote for the deal, considering it included less wall money than what Senate appropriators agreed to in December, before the shutdown, according to people close with them.

[...]

Meanwhile, as lawmakers met at the Capitol and finalized details of the spending agreement in recent weeks, Trump and his aides frantically scrambled to get barriers built by any means and to convince his political supporters that he was fulfilling his campaign promise. A national emergency declaration was seen as likely because their expectations for the bipartisan group were so low.

The president huddled with contractors to review designs; his budget gurus identified pots of money that might be tapped by executive fiat for wall construction; his lawyers reviewed the U.S. Code and drafted orders; and his political hands debuted a new slogan designed to convey that nonexistent action was already under­way: “Finish the wall.”

[...]

And the White House Counsel’s Office expressed concerns that the emergency declaration would be legally dicey.

Several top White House officials said [...] they were hoping to keep whatever emerged from Congress as a congressional product and something the president could later dismiss as inadequate as he seeks to rally his core voters for his 2020 reelection campaign, as he did Monday at a rally in El Paso.

“There’s power in that,” said Marc Short, Trump’s former White House legislative affairs director. “It’s underreported how being able to run against D.C. and Congress as an outsider helped him in 2016, and he can make that case again.”

Inside the West Wing, Trump’s advisers argued to him that his call for a border wall was more popular because of his showdown with Congress and that his approval ratings had improved slightly.

[...]

Privately, Trump complained vociferously about the final deal and said he felt Republican negotiators had failed him and that he might not sign it, according to one person who spoke to the president. “Everyone thinks this is terrible,” Trump told this person on Tuesday, echoing the criticism from some of his supporters in conservative media, including Fox News host Sean Hannity.

It's important to note that when he says "everyone", he's talking about Sean Hannity, Ann Coulter, Lou Dobbs, Stephen Miller and Laura Ingraham.

But Trump did not have the stomach for another shutdown and told aides it had generated nonstop negative coverage. Polls showed most Americans blamed him for the shutdown in December and January, the longest in the nation’s history.

[...]

On Capitol Hill, there was no appetite, either, particularly among Republicans who were rattled by the GOP’s poor showing in suburban and swing areas last year. “Just not an option, at all,” Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick (R-Pa.) said. “We’d state the obvious: The first shutdown was a mistake and we can’t do it again.”

[...]

Still, Trump can be combustible and sometimes acts rashly when he feels cornered, so some Republican senators spent recent days on the phone, soothing him and trying to persuade him to hold his fire. McConnell also asked Trump to withhold judgment until the details of the deal were finalized.

[...]

Democrats, privately, were amused but made a conscious decision not to gloat — concerned that if they celebrated what they considered a victory Thursday they might anger Trump enough to veto the deal.

One conferee summarized the instructions from Democratic leaders: “Don’t poke the bear.”

Stop coddling and impeach the motherfucker.

UPDATE: