Donald Trump may be the worst negotiator in politics.
On Wednesday night, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi announced the president agreed to give amnesty to the illegal aliens covered under Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) without any funding for the border wall.
When first announced, White House press secretary Sarah Sanders tried to claim that wall funding wasn’t excluded from the negotiations of a DACA deal. But in true Trump fashion, the president himself confirmed the wall was cut out of the negotiations Thursday morning.
In several stupid tweets, Trump praised his own poor negotiation skills and made statements that sounded like they had come straight from the people who think he’s a white supremacist.
Does anybody really want to throw out good, educated and accomplished young people who have jobs, some serving in the military? Really!…..
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) September 14, 2017
…They have been in our country for many years through no fault of their own – brought in by parents at young age. Plus BIG border security
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) September 14, 2017
Trump is getting nothing out of this deal except for some superficial funding for “border security” that will most certainly not secure the border. He initially came into the negotiations with a strong hand, having the power to scrap protections for illegal aliens brought here as minors, better known as Dreamers.
Instead, he gave that hand away for nothing. He could’ve exchanged protections for them in getting the RAISE Act, legislation intending to limit legal immigration and reform the system entirely, passed. He could have obviously insisted on getting funding for the wall.
But he got none of those things for a deal that will only benefit the self-esteem of his daughter Ivanka.
Art of the Deal, right?
The only thing that Trump may get out of this deal is possible Democratic support for his tax reform package, but that’s unlikely. Schumer and Pelosi played Trump and once they get what they want from him and Republicans, they can sabotage his legislative efforts at no cost to themselves.
What do they have to lose by ensuring Trump is a failed president with the only legislative achievement of giving millions of illegals amnesty?
The president has shown in the past his dismal political negotiations in the health care fight, but the total capitulation over DACA comes as a greater betrayal to his base.
The data wonk site FiveThirtyEight declared earlier this week that Donald Trump’s “hardline immigration stance” helped him become president.
Culling polling data from Republican primary contests, FiveThirtyEight discovered a common trend in voters that went for Trump: they were very concerned with immigration. In every state that had an exit poll, GOP primary voters said immigration was their top concern overwhelmingly voted for the eventual party nominee.
They were not voting for Trump to protect Dreamers. They were voting for him to enforce the law and restore our national sovereignty.
Trump took the hardest line on immigration out of all Republican candidates, and won the nomination. None of these voters are going to be impressed with a deal that gives DHS the ability to legalize whomever they want in exchange for a few more patrol cars on a wall-less border.
Let’s go back to tax reform, the idea that Schumer and Pelosi likely entertained to bamboozle Trump into accepting amnesty.
There is likely going to be gaslighting done on the part of Trump shills that the president’s campaign was all about cutting corporate taxes, not immigration.
But that’s obviously a lie. No one chanted “Save the hedge funds” or “build that summer yacht” at Trump’s rallies. Tax cuts as the panacea for all problems represents the GOP establishment Trump defeated in the primary.
Now that stale, uninspiring, out-of-touch agenda is the agenda of the White House — plus amnesty!
It gets worse when you consider how Republicans in Congress are planning how to offset the loss revenue from a massive corporate tax cut. As Politico reported in August, some Republicans are proposing a tax on employees’ 401ks to pay for their bosses’ tax cuts.
If amnesty and this anti-populist tax reform get passed, Trump’s message to the working class is he wants illegal immigrants to take your jobs and the federal government to snatch your savings.
What a great message for 2020.
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