President Trump’s supporters elected him, in part, because they saw him as a wily tycoon and deft dealmaker who could shake up Washington and bring decades of business know-how to the Oval Office.
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Trump, in reality, was never a peerless or even a particularly skillful dealmaker, and many of the most significant business transactions he engineered
imploded. Instead, he made his way in the world as an indefatigable self-promoter, a marketing confection and a human billboard who frequently licensed his name to buildings and products paid for by others.
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Striking lasting deals requires intimacy with the finer points of what every party wants out of a negotiation, realistic goals, maturity, patience, flexibility — and enough leverage so the other side can’t simply stall or walk away from the table. Trump hasn’t met any of those prerequisites in his repeated efforts to fulfill his campaign promise to build a wall, a promise that played to the most xenophobic and bigoted portion of his base while not addressing any of the real shortcomings or necessary enhancements of federal immigration policy.
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Trump also missed chances last year, when Republicans still controlled the House, to seal deals that might have given him significantly more funding for a wall than the $5 billion he wants — and is unlikely to get — now. Early in the year, hampered by his inability to be flexible or understand the other side’s needs, Trump opposed a bipartisan Senate proposal that offered $25 billion for a wall as long as a path to citizenship was opened for 1.7 million young, undocumented immigrants living in the U.S.
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Left reeling and desperate, he said on Friday and again on Sunday that he may declare a national emergency on the southern border so he can simply appropriate the taxpayer funds he wants. Such a move may not even be legal, would prompt Democrats to file a lawsuit to stop him regardless, and is likely to further alienate some Republicans worn down by his antics.
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“We need a dealmaker in the White House, who knows how to think innovatively and make smart deals,” he tweeted back in 2011.
We still don’t have one.
