In Trump’s mind, the only constant is changeability
Our subject today is Donald Trump’s mind.
Not the speculation about whether he’s losing his marbles. That was during our “Fire and Fury” period last week.
Now, we’re thinking about that lovely bipartisan meeting the president hosted Tuesday with members of Congress about immigration. Everybody was impressed by how concerned Trump seemed to be about all the young Dreamers suddenly facing possible deportation.
“I came out feeling the president had made it very clear he wants this resolved ASAP,” said Steny Hoyer of Maryland, the House Democratic whip.
The only problem is that Trump seems to be committed to two totally contradictory ideas on what to do. Right now the real immigration crisis is about the 800,000 young people who were brought here illegally as children and given protection under the Obama administration.
Trump hates calling them Dreamers, so he refers to them as “the DACA population,” after the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program that protected them. Until he terminated it.
They could be in danger of deportation beginning in March. The “Tuesday Trump” was very disturbed about this situation. Really, you’d hardly have known that he was the one who created it. He called for “a bill of love.”
The fix is actually pretty easy. There’s a bipartisan bill floating around the House right now that would protect the Dreamers from deportation and add more money for technology to guard the border. Then later on, if it’s feeling ambitious, Congress could tackle a big immigration reform. That would include a path to citizenship for many illegal immigrants and some sops to conservatives, like restrictions on their ability to bring in relatives.
And yeah, maybe some wall equivalent. We don’t need to discuss that now. But even if you thought building a monstrous multibillion-dollar barrier along the border was a good idea, it’s not going to happen anytime soon.
Here is the current vision in the president’s mind: “We don’t need a wall where you have rivers and mountains and everything else protecting it,” he told that congressional meeting. “But we do need a wall for a fairly good portion. We also — as you know, it was passed in 2006 — an essentially similar thing which — a fence, a very substantial fence — was passed. But unfortunately, I don’t know, they never got it done. But they need it.”
So, OK.
Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., proposed doing “a clean DACA bill now” followed by a major immigration reform later. Trump thought that was a great idea. “We’re going to do DACA,” he announced, “and then we can start immediately on the phase two, which would be comprehensive.”
So easy, so bipartisan, so ... bill of love.
Then Wednesday the president shouted “No! No! No!” when asked if he’d be open to any deal on the Dreamers that didn’t also involve his Mexican wall.
So, Trump, who told those Congress members he would “take the heat” for anything they wanted to do to save the Dreamers, threw up a wall. How do we explain all this? A) Situational ethics. B) Extreme dementia. C) Just another day. Your guess is as good as mine. The great part of this tactic is that everybody walks away feeling they’ve made a real impression.
Until it becomes clear that nothing ever sinks in.