Infanteer said:
The article gives him perhaps excessively early plaudits on NAFTA. He hasn't gotten it through Congress yet and it's very possible he may not. He negotiated a draft deal, but that's not the same as ratification and legislative enablement. He is one of the co-equal branches of government. He does not govern by diktat; he has to get his major policy wishes through the two houses of Congress, who are the elected representatives of the people. If he can pull that off, *then* he deserves credit for a major trade deal. Concurrently, he pulled the US out of at least one other major trade bloc expecting that deal to necessarily then die, but instead the rest of us the countries involved sidestepped him and carried on... Not a particularly astute move.
Other promises have very clearly *not* been kept. "We're gonna built a wall and Mexico will pay for it"... Well, no, no they won't. Nor, apparently, will Congress, so you get to own a prolonged shutdown that mere weeks ago you boasted you would be proud of. He promised to end Birthright Citizenship, one of his more constitutionally concerning promises. That has not progress and can safely be considered 'broken' with the Democrats in control of the House. He promised massive infrastructure investment that has not happened. He promised to cancel all federal funding for Sanctuary Cities- broken. A ban on foreign lobbyists raising money for American elections- No move. Renegotiating the Iran deal - Nada. Mass deportation of Syrian refugees- Broken. Mandatory minimum sentences for people caught entering the US illegally- broken (utterly impractical anyway). Releasing his tax returns- broken, he's even walked back on the 'after the audit' promise. Fortunately some of his dumber promises are 'broken' too- meddling with vaccine schedules to avoid autism, eliminating the federal debt in eight years, a wholesale ban on Muslims entering the US... He has promised a lot of stuff, some of it pretty eyebrow raising.
The BBC is also greatly underselling just how blatantly and frequently he outright lies or fabricates stuff. Not slight exaggerations, but really stupidly blatant stuff. That's been covered at length here so I won't waste anyone's time with yet more specific examples, but the 'so what?' is it makes him so damned unreliable and unpredictable for political and diplomatic allies. Add that to his penchant for doing whatever the hell he wants, and he has problems. More than ever right now he needs to be able to be perceived by his party's Senate as someone who can be worked with... He's not doing a particularly good job of that, and his intransigence is only going to increasingly cause issues for Republican senators who may be politically vulnerable in 2020. The longer this shutdown drags on, the more he risks facing his own senate sending playing 'legislative chicken' and putting the ball in his court to actually veto appropriations bills that a *lot* of Americans are dependent upon and that the entirety of congress may get to the point of passing out of frustration. Worst case for him would be to continue the tantrum and eventually face a veto override. That can no longer be discounted as a possibility.
Politically he's pretty much 'all in' on that damned wall. And the only real 'win' for him is a complete win. Anything less than what he has repeatedly demanded at this point and he will suffer for it. He's pushed this too long and too far for a subsequent compromise to win him any points with anyone.
Another missed federal paycheck in a week... Pressure will amp up, and he's going to be seeing more and more pushback soon. He's facing legal action for trying to order back to work employees who cannot possibly fall under the provisions allowing for unpaid work to protect live and property, because the disruptions are starting to bite. He will probably lose at least some of those legal actions- and that's only going to get worse and some problems take days or weeks to manifest as work doesn't get done.
For better or worse he said in no uncertain terms that he owns this shutdown and is proud of it. He doesn't get to walk it back, not now. How he lies in this bed he made will be interesting.
