Different ways of looking at a Trump tweet

The Heritage Foundation's James Jay Carafano has been one of the Trump administration's most stalwart defenders in its first 100 days. In his latest at the National Interest, Carafano argues that, all appearances to the contrary, the administration really has a coherent foreign policy strategy. Carafano further argues that the appearances are confusing more critical commentators such as myself:

"Since the early days of the campaign, one thing has been clear: trying to stitch together an understanding of Trump's foreign and defense policy based on Trump's tweets and other off-hand comments is a fool's errand. That has not changed since the Donald took over the Oval Office.

"That is not to say that none of Trump's rhetoric matters. He has given some serious speeches and commentary. But pundits err when they give every presidential utterance equal merit. A joint address to Congress ought to carry a lot more weight than a 3 a.m. tweet about the Terminator."

As someone who just wrote a book lamenting that many academics make a mistake in treating all words equally, I can sympathize with Carafano's position. That said, when foreign populations react to some of Trump's more careless words, I think it's important.

More importantly, sometimes a single tweet of Donald Trump's can tell us a great deal about the man and how he is doing as president. So let me offer five different ways of looking at a Trump tweet from Sunday:

"Eventually, but at a later date so we can get started early, Mexico will be paying, in some form, for the badly needed border wall."

What can be inferred from this tweet about Trump's approach to the presidency and foreign affairs? I would argue, contra Carafano, quite a bit! In ascending order of importance:

1) Trump cannot write his way out of a paper bag.

This is a run-on sentence riddled with redundancies. It is more coherent that he sounds in his AP interview, but it's a close call. Given the style and the time of its composition, we can assume that he wrote it. We can also infer that whenever Trump is speaking off the cuff, he is very likely to say something that will harm the national interest. A truly America First strategy would put Trump into the same penalty box as Rex Tillerson when it comes to improvised remarks.

Even if you think illegal immigration is the most super-important issue in the whole wide world, the border wall is not "badly needed." Illegal immigration across the southern border has been declining since the 2008 financial crisis. It has fallen even more dramatically in 2017. Even if you want to stop the remaining streams of illegal immigration, "building a wall is the most expensive and least effective way to secure the border," according to Rep. Will Hurd, R-Texas, whose

2) Trump lies a lot.

district has the most miles of U.S.-Mexico border than any other. Maybe this explains why, according to the Wall Street Journal, "not a single member of Congress who represents the territory on the southwest border said they support President Donald Trump's request for $1.4 billion to begin construction of his promised wall."

So either Trump does not know what he is talking about or he's lying. Actually, both are possible.

3) Trump won't honor many of his campaign promises.

The Trump campaign's original proposal on this issue said the following:

"Mexico must pay for the wall and, until they do, the United States will, among other things: impound all remittance payments derived from illegal wages; increase fees on all temporary visas issued to Mexican CEOs and diplomats (and if necessary cancel them); increase fees on all border crossing cards - of which we issue about 1 million to Mexican nationals each year (a major source of visa overstays); increase fees on all NAFTA worker visas from Mexico (another major source of overstays); and increase fees at ports of entry to the United States from Mexico [Tariffs and foreign aid cuts are also options]. We will not be taken advantage of anymore."

Seems pretty clear: Unless and until Mexico started paying, Trump was promising to sanction them immediately. Alas, there's a lot ofbehind-thescenes evidence that Trump's foreign policy team has not talked to Mexico about paying for the wall – and by behindthe-scenes evidence, I mean Trump officials talking on television.

This merely highlights the many Trump campaign promises that he has gone back on, particularly in the area of foreign policy.

4) Trump continues to make promises that he will not be able to honor.

This is yet another example of threatening an ally in such a way as to reduce the likelihood of Trump's preferred outcome from occurring. It also threatens to set Mexican-American relations back to the preNAFTA era, an outcome that even someone like Mark Krikorian, executive director of the Center for Immigration Studies, thinks is a bad idea.

5) Weirdly, Trump's tweet steps on one of his few tangible policy accomplishments.

As we approach the 100-day mark, Trump cannot claim a lot of policy accomplishments beyond getting Neil Gorsuch confirmed. But I do think his hostile rhetoric deserves some credit for causing illegal immigration inflows to drop even more than they had been dropping before he was inaugurated. One can question whether this achievement is worth the cost, but for a presidency with precious few accomplishments, this is a real thing he can tout.

The thing is, if Trump's rhetoric is what's causing the drop, then this tweet steps on his policy accomplishment by ignoring it.