Trump Caves, and Declares Victory

Trump:  "There are going to be a lot of happy people."

I predicted this two days ago, but it was an easy prediction. It is classic Trump. 

Donald Trump said, "This has been going on for sixty years. Nobody's had the political courage to take care of it."

Trump calls it victory 

Nobody until Trump, the hero.

Donald Trump did the two things I predicted here on June 19.  He caved and called it a victory.

With his typical grand flourish and a bold tipped pen he signed an executive order ending the separation of children from parents who had entered illegally seeking asylum. 

This blog called it a "cave" to pressure--and that is how the media is covering it--but Trump does not voice it that way. Trump beams with pride. If he says its a victory, it is a victory.  (I consider it bravado, but as the Guest Post below details, perhaps there is method at work and this is a true victory.)

Trump has an uncanny understanding of human psychology. Trump created a crisis he could fix--and he fixed it. He made himself a hero and a great many people will focus on Trump as the problem-solver. After all, it was all the Democrats' fault in the first place, he said.

A big change is underway. We see a useful "tell" in how this played out. 

Trump had expressed casual disregard for the feelings of people in the GOP leadership, and it was part of why his candidacy had appeal. He replaced unpopular neoconservatism with more popular ethno-nationalism. He positioned himself as the fearless man of the people, changing the old habits of the GOP. He swatted down some fifteen Republican politicians and scoffed at Paul Ryan, Mitch McConnell. He changed historic GOP policy on Russia, on immigration, on trade. He took over the party and it adopted Trump's views; he didn't adopt theirs. He led the party to himself.

That was then. 

There is a new vulnerability.  GOP officeholders were starting to speak out, daring to disagree with Trump, even in the immediate aftermath of the Mark Sanford loss in South Carolina. In general the border and immigration issue is a winner for Trump, but the optics of crying children made officeholders nervous. They were distancing themselves from Trump. This time that mattered. Trump moved to them.

Trump is no longer the free agent he was. The Mueller investigation into Trump and his associates might expose something ugly. In the worst case scenario for Trump there is always the firewall of GOP support among officeholders. With them, he cannot be indicted, he can pardon whomever he wants, and he cannot be impeached. He is untouchable, when he has the firewall. 

Trump is now governing to maintain the firewall. Trump now has a Board of Directors to report to, GOP officeholders. 

It is a new era. Trump has a boss. 
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But wait.  There is another way to look at this. Perhaps Donald Trump has been one or two steps ahead of this from the beginning. Maybe this is actually very good for Trump and very dangerous for Democrats.

Thad Guyer posits that Trump has long understood that the immigration issue is a winner for Republicans because Democrats in the past decade have pushed themselves into essentially advocating for open borders. Their response to Trump's provocations went as Trump planned.  

Guyer is an attorney specializing is representing whistleblower employees. His practice is worldwide and he observes American politics from wherever his laptop computer is, most frequently in Vietnam.

Thad Guyer

Guest Comment by Thad Guyer

"There's A Sucker Born Every Minute"

That expression originated with a banker David Hannum in describing the success of P.T. Barnum's hoaxes. Trump's hoax of creating a nationwide network of "kiddie cages" for illegal immigrants has fed the rage that keeps him in firm control of the national narrative on anything politically important.  The suckers believe the hoax,  thinking Trump blundered and now he retreats with his tail between his legs. Rachel Maddow was not one of the suckers. Before closing her show Tuesday night in emotional distress not seen on her face since election night showed how misplaced MSNBC's forecasts were, Maddow meticulously laid out the following case:  All the public rage we are seeing on incarcerated children is exactly how Trump has choreographed it.  

In my comment to Peter's post in which he predicted Trump would cave, I cited the New York Times podcast "The Daily"  in which Michael Barbaro argued we are seeing what Trump wants us to see, feeling what he wants us to feel.  Maddow, Barbaro, the Atlantic, New Republic and others including Peter Sage have cautioned against believing Trump's hoaxes and the delusion that he bumbles into "mistakes".  Trump told us from the start how "horrible" separating children is, and dispatched his Attorney General and DHS Secretary to condition us about a federal court injunction forbidding long-term custodial detention of minors.  In a midterm election strategy, Trump and his chief immigration strategist Stephen Miller turned the focus to Democrats, calling on them to stop just obstructing and support legislation that would modify the "consent degree" in Reno v. Flores (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reno_v._Flores#Holding). 

In Flores, the Supreme Court ruled that immigrant children can constitutionally be separated from from their detained parents.   Clinton's AG Janet Reno then negotiated a settlement agreeing that the children would be incarcerated for no more than 20 days before being sent away into foster care. The Trump administrations wants that consent degree modified to allow the immigrant kids to be incarcerated for a longer term until the child and parent-- 80% of them-- can be deported "as a family unit".  Only 20% ever win asylum.

So what is the big victory over Trump?  There is no victory, the "cave" is a hoax just like the "kiddie cages".  Yesterday he posed with a leather bound "executive order" the crux of which is Section 3(e): "The Attorney General shall promptly file a request ... to modify the Settlement Agreement in Flores ... in a manner that would permit the Secretary ... to detain alien families together throughout the pendency of criminal proceedings ..."  That's the victory--  to ask a court in the liberal Ninth Circuit to approve keeping the whole family locked up until they can all be deported together?  No such approval will likely be given and Trump knows it.  That's the hoax, that's the illusion.  Instead, he built a grand suspense-filled theater in which GOP midterm candidates benefited from a kumbaya moment of bipartisan rage against an inhumanity Trump himself had two days earlier decried as forced upon him by meddling courts and perpetuated by obstructionist Democrats. America "learned" GOP candidates can be trusted to break with Trump when it comes to humanity.

So where are we now?  The ball is where Trump put it-- in the courts and on the Democratic side of the aisle as the mid-terms fast approach.  Democrats, already railing against any legislative cooperation with these new humane Republicans, are right where Trump wants them-- advocating for what amounts to open borders.