What did Donald Trump do today?

He made his dictator fetish about as clear as he possibly could.

In the last few days, Trump has attacked and blockaded Venezuela, renewed threats to annex Greenland, tried to force Ukraine to surrender to Russia, and threatened violence against a laundry list of countries including but not necessarily limited to Cuba, Canada, Mexico, Iran, Syria, Denmark, Nigeria, Nicaragua, Colombia, Panama, and NATO as a whole.

Trump made two more alarming comments in an interview released by the New York Times today. The first came when he was asked if there were any limits on his powers to invade, harass, or overthrow other nations. He responded:

Yeah, there is one thing. My own morality. My own mind. It’s the only thing that can stop me.  

In reality, Trump is above neither domestic nor international law, although he can't be prosecuted while he remains in office—especially since he made a point of appointing his personal defense lawyers to run the Department of Justice. 

The second alarming thing Trump said today is that he thinks that Xi Jinping, the authoritarian ruler-for-life of China, has the same rights where Taiwan is concerned, saying of Xi that "it's up to him" whether China breaks over 70 years of US-imposed stalemate and reconquers the island. This follows concerns that China, Russia, and other authoritarian regimes looking to expand their regional influence might follow Trump's lead in Venezuela. 

Trump's branding for the idea that he can attack, colonize, or extort any country that isn't the special province of another authoritarian ruler is the "Donroe Doctrine." That's meant to be a play on the Monroe Doctrine from the early 1800s. There's a more accurate historical analogy, though: the 1939 Molotov-Ribbentrop pact (also known as the Hitler-Stalin Pact), in which Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union agreed to divide Europe into their respective spheres of influence.

Why does this matter?

• "I am accountable to nobody on the planet except myself" is what a cartoon supervillain says, not the leader of a democracy. 

• The "morality" of a convicted felon, tax cheat, rapist, fraudster, and longtime close friend of Jeffrey Epstein isn't going to stop him from doing anything. 

• Empowering dictators is a bad idea for the United States but it is what you'd expect from a man who openly admires them and their tactics to the point of worshipfulness.

What did Donald Trump do today?

He pissed off just about everyone without even leaving his weekend resort.

Trump is once again spending the weekend resting at his Florida result, with no events on his schedule. It's a light day even by Trump's famously casual schedule: the 78-year-old is not golfing, or—remarkably, for him—even posting to his private microblogging site.

That said, he did manage to make sure people were talking about him. Among the ways Trump found himself in the news today:

Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum called him out for his "offer" to use American troops on Mexican territory. Trump had been trying to portray himself as taking a tough line with Mexico, accusing Sheinbaum of being "very, very afraid" of Mexican drug cartels. But in a speech today, Sheinbaum flatly and without diplomatic nicety rejected any possibility of allowing an American military incursion, calling it a violation of Mexican sovereignty: "We will never accept the presence of the United States Army in our territory. I told him, ‘No, President Trump, our territory is inviolable, our sovereignty is inviolable, our sovereignty is not for sale.'"

Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese also scored domestic political points at Trump's expense, winning re-election for his center-left Labor Party after campaigning directly against Trump. In his victory speech, Albanese said, "Our government will choose the Australian way because we are proud of who we are. We do not seek our inspiration from overseas. We find it right here in our values and our people."

This was a direct dig at both Trump and the conservative opposition leader Peter Dutton, who modeled himself and his party after the MAGA movement, only to watch a substantial poll lead evaporate after Trump returned to office and alienated Australian voters. This is the second foreign election Trump has lost single-handedly for the party associated with him, and much like in the Canadian elections on Monday, the leader of the pro-Trump party failed to even keep his own seat.

European leaders marking V-E Day used the occasion to lament the United States' decline on the world stage, and Trump's apparent abandonment of American allies in favor of personal enrichment and fealty to the Putin regime in Russia.

Trump recently "hereby declared" that he was renaming V-E Day as "Victory Day for World War II," in a post that seemed to forget some basic facts about the war—for example, that it didn't end with surrender of Germany. As with his attempt to rename the Gulf of Mexico, Trump doesn't have any real authority to do this, except that people may want to humor him by playing along.

American Catholics, including arch-conservative church leaders who normally offer Trump their political support, were infuriated by a Trump posting a picture of himself as the pope to White House social media accounts. In perhaps the most direct rebuke to a sitting president American Catholic leadership has ever made, the archdiocese of New York bluntly told Trump, "Do not mock us."

Trump made no secret of his dislike for the late Pope Francis and trolled him in life as well as in death, at one point fantasizing about Francis's death at the hands of the Islamic State and suggesting that Francis would be sorry he didn't have Trump's protection then.

Why does this matter?

• Presidents who needlessly piss off strategic partners, military allies, and major world religions hurt the United States.

What did Donald Trump do today?

He told farmers they were planting the wrong crops.

Trump tried to spin his on-again, off-again tariffs on the United States' largest trading partners this way in a post to his boutique social media platform:

There's no real mystery as to what will happen if retaliatory tariffs deprive American farmers of the natural market for their products, because it happened already in Trump's first term. Crop prices will drop, which will cause farms to fail. Businesses that rely on farms will fail too, costing hundreds of thousands of jobs. Massive bailouts will be required to prop up the entire agriculture sector. There was even a rash of suicides as a result of farm bankruptcies the last time Trump tried this.

Trump's post implies that farmers can simply sell the same products to domestic customers. This is, to put it gently, absurd. American farmers already sell their products in the United States, but almost $200 billion worth of products are grown with the export market in mind. Trying to flood the domestic market with these crops on short notice would force farms to sell at massive losses and wreck the agricultural sector outright. American producers could try to absorb the cost of retaliatory tariffs instead, but at 25% that would still be unsurvivable for many farmers.

It's not clear if Trump understands that, for example, Americans can't really serve cattle feed at the dinner table. Changing the crops a given farm produces takes years of advance planning and infrastructure investment, if it can be done at all. 

Even worse for American farmers, foreign producers will not face the same problems. Because the United States under Trump is starting a trade war with all four of its largest trading partners at the same time, there will be trade barriers against American farmers in all directions simultaneously. But Chinese agricultural producers, for example, will only be restricted in one market, and will find it easier to reach buyers in other countries (including Canada, Mexico and the European Union). 

Likewise, American consumers will see grocery prices go up more than consumers in countries that are not inviting tariffs from all their major trade partners. (Tariffs are taxes and are ultimately paid for by consumers in the form of higher retail prices.)

In other words, Trump is telling American farmers that they have already committed to planting the wrong crops, and that it will be their fault if they can't "have fun" with the resulting chaos. 

Why does this matter?

• When doing something once ended in disaster, it's really stupid to try it again but on an even bigger scale.

• Voters who eat food may not want Trump screwing up the food supply chain again.

What did Donald Trump do today?

He made empty threats at yet another friendly country.

In recent weeks, Trump has made threats—apparently serious in his own mind, at least, to invade Mexico and annex Canada. To put it mildly, these threats have not been taken seriously by their targets. Today, for whatever reason, he threatened to seize the Panama Canal because it was charging American ships to pass through it—which is what all canals do.

The canal was originally administered by the United States. The Canal Zone, a ten-mile-wide strip of territory that cut the nation of Panama in half, was ceded back in 1979 as part of a treaty process. This was relatively uncontroversial at the time, bipartisan in terms of American politics, and was seen as benefiting both nations. Anger over the Panama Canal Treaty quickly faded to the fringes of American politics.

(Trump was accused of evading Panamanian taxes in 2019, but that complaint came from the business partners who say he ripped them off, not the government of Panama itself.)

Of course, there's nothing stopping Trump from invading a sovereign nation and seizing its canals, except what stops the United States from trying to conduct wars of aggression against any country's territory that might be useful to have: the strong likelihood that it would polarize the rest of the world against us, strengthen our actual enemies, and do far more economic damage than not invading.

Why does this matter?

• Making threats that nobody takes seriously only makes the country weaker.

• It's a problem that we can't tell why Trump is suddenly extremely agitated about an issue that hasn't been in the headlines since he was in his mid-30s.

What did Donald Trump do today?

He actually boosted the economy, after a fashion.

Today is "Black Friday," traditionally a very busy shopping day, and a bellwether for the strength of the retail economy. It is expected to be a good one, with inflation and unemployment both low, and most other economic indicators in the green since the pandemic economy ended.

But there is one factor driving sales today that is very unusual: shoppers are listening to retailers and economic experts, and reporting that they are buying big-ticket items now, rather than risk seeing their prices driven up if Trump makes good on his promise to reignite a trade war with the United States' three largest trading partners.

This is a rational fear: consumers are effectively saying that they understand that tariffs are taxes that are ultimately paid by consumers in the country that imposes them, and that they would prefer not to pay them if possible. This is a concept that has been famously difficult for Trump to grasp.

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau visited Trump tonight to discuss the situation. He appears to be playing the "good cop," with Mexican president Claudia Sheinbaum and Trudeau's own opposition being more blunt. Trudeau, who has been in office since 2015, has developed something of a sideline in helping to "manage" Trump, sometimes at the behest of Trump's own staff.

Why does this matter?

• Americans should not have to save themselves from the costs of their own president's incompetence.

• Americans should not have to rely on foreign leaders to save them, either.

What did Donald Trump do today?

He got his bluff called.

Yesterday, Trump threatened to impose 25% across-the-board tariffs on Mexico and Canada, the United States' two largest trading partners.

Today, both countries promised to retaliate.

Claudia Sheinbaum, Mexico's president, said in a statement that

For every tariff, there will be a response in kind, until we put at risk our shared enterprises. Yes, shared. For instance, among Mexico’s main exporters to the United States are General Motors, Stellantis, and Ford Motor Company, which arrived in Mexico 80 years ago. Why impose a tariff that would jeopardize them? Such a measure would be unacceptable and would lead to inflation and job losses in both the United States and Mexico.

Justin Trudeau, the prime minister of Canada, took a slightly more conciliatory tone, but ended up in the same place. He pointed out that European markets could take up the slack while noting that 60% of the United States' crude oil imports come from Canada. Ironically, it was Canada's more Trump-like politicians who pointed out that retaliation was inevitable and the resulting trade war would once again be disastrous. "It's like a family member stabbing you right in the heart," said Ontario premier Doug Ford.

According to the extremely conservative Tax Foundation, Trump's last attempt at a trade war caused an additional $80 billion in taxes to be paid by Americans, while reducing total tax revenue collected, increasing the budget deficit. The resulting economic chaos shuttered farms and businesses, putting as many as 250,000 Americans permanently out of work.

The United States does over $1.3 trillion in trade each year with Mexico and Canada.

Why does this matter?

• It's stupid to double down on a catastrophic failure.

• Other countries—even allies and trading partners—will not try to save the United States from the consequences of its own president's actions.

What did Donald Trump do today?

He forgot how his first trade war went.

Today, Trump said that one of his first acts after being inaugurated would be to impose 25% tariffs on Mexico and Canada.

Specifically, he said that he would do this to force Mexico and Canada to prevent immigrants and drugs from coming across the U.S. border. Presumably he meant across the southern U.S. border, in which case it's not clear what Canada has to do with it.

As for Mexico, this isn't the first time that Trump has tried to outsource the United States' immigration policy to that country. In his first administration, his reliance on an Obama Administration agreement called Programa Frontera Sur, where Mexico would take steps to reduce the number of migrants passing through its southern border to the United States, gave Mexico enormous leverage over the United States.

Mexico is the United States' single biggest trade partner.

Tariffs are taxes paid by American consumers on foreign goods. As such, they tend to fall most heavily on low- and middle-class Americans, who cannot afford large price increases. In small amounts, they are a technical economic tool for working out trade imbalances or protecting domestic industries. 

Tariffs are not useful as instruments of foreign policy, because their function is to reduce trade that American consumers want. Because countries inevitably impose tariffs of their own on American goods in retaliation, the resulting trade war hurts all sides.

Trump had an opportunity to learn this lesson during his first term, when he entered into an absolutely disastrous trade war with China and the European Union. It cost hundreds of thousands of American jobs, slowed the growth of the U.S. economy to a crawl, and led to massive farm foreclosures because crop prices fell through the floor. There was a spike in suicides by bankrupted farmers as a result, after multiple taxpayer bailouts failed. It also spiked the overall U.S. world trade deficit—meaning that the United States imported more goods at higher prices for its consumers than before—which was the opposite of what Trump said it would do.

Trump also said today that he would impose huge tariffs on China, which, again, means imposing enormous taxes on Americans who want or need to buy Chinese goods, like computer hardware or prescription drugs.

Why does this matter?

• Presidents should be able to learn from catastrophic mistakes.

• Presidents should be able to admit catastrophic mistakes.

• The United States economy is too important for a president to be this ignorant about how it works.

What did Donald Trump do today?

He tried to distance himself from yet another indicted campaign manager.

Steve Bannon was indicted today in federal court. He and three other defendants are accused of defrauding donors to a non-profit that promised to crowdfund the building of a border fence with Mexico. The US Attorney in the case, Geoffrey Berman, is the same person Trump unsuccessfully tried to purge from the job earlier this summer.

Asked about Bannon's arrest, Trump said this:

Well, I feel very badly. I haven’t been dealing with him for a long period of time, as most of the people in this room know. He was involved in our campaign, he worked for Goldman Sachs, he worked for a lot of companies, but he was involved likewise in our campaign, and for a small part of the administration very early on.

Bannon was "involved" in the Trump campaign as its CEO. Once Trump took office, his "small part" was as a senior advisor with a national security portfolio usually reserved for military generals and virtually unfettered access to Trump.

Trump also tried to distance himself from the donor-supported "We Build The Wall" scheme that Bannon and his co-defendants siphoned money from. 

I know nothing about the project, other than I didn’t like, when I read about it I didn’t like it. I said this is for government, this isn’t for private people, and it sounded to me like showboating and I think I let my opinion be very strongly stated at the time.

 

In reality, it's difficult to keep track of all the ways Trump is involved with Bannon's scheme. The general counsel for the project, failed Senate candidate Kris Kobach, said publicly in 2019 that the private wall had Trump's explicit blessing, which the White House did not deny when asked. Donald Trump Jr., whose main job is as a political surrogate for his father, appeared in a video with one of the people indicted today and praised it as "private enterprise at its finest."

But the most damning connection between Trump and the private fence scheme comes in the form of a $1.4 billion contract awarded to a construction company involved in it. Trump himself "personally and repeatedly" pressured the Army Corps of Engineers to award a lucrative contract for the "real" border fence. 

The beneficiary, Tommy Fisher, is a major Republican donor and conservative media star. Fisher put up at least $25 million towards the private fence scheme, but that appears to have sealed the deal in terms of getting Trump to lean on government contractors.

Bannon joins Paul Manafort, Rick Gates, Roger Stone, Michael Flynn, and Michael Cohen as top Trump campaign officials indicted for or convicted of federal crimes.

Why does this matter?

• Presidents who care about "law and order" generally have fewer criminals than this running their campaigns.

• Donors to a cause endorsed by the Trump family whose money was stolen by Trump's campaign manager might not think Trump really "knew nothing" about this.

• Billion-dollar government contracts should go to the most qualified low bidders, not political cronies who kick money back to a president's other associates.

What did Donald Trump do today?

He complained about ineffective Trump-style border fencing.

Trump's anger found an unusual target today: a border fence with Mexico. Specifically, a three-mile stretch built by a Trump supporter. No taxpayer money went towards this section of fence—although $1.7 billion of public funds did go to its developer to build other border barriers. The fence, which is situated along the Rio Grande, is the subject of a lawsuit over its violation of a treaty with Mexico and environmental regulations. It's also rapidly weakening from erosion.

Trump, either displeased by the bad press the fence is getting or worried about the ongoing investigation into the contracts awarded to its builder, tweeted this morning about it:

It might be making Trump look bad, but that wasn't the idea, and he knows it. The company that built it has Trump's political guru Steve Bannon on its board, and its backers were likewise Trump supporters. In fact, the taxpayer-funded government contract for other fence construction is under investigation because of the political connections between the awardee and Trump's campaign.

Three miles might be a "very small (tiny)" wall, but it's not something Trump should be making light of, since that's about how much of the border he's managed to put new fences on, too. (The rest of the supposed "500 plus miles" was repairing or replacing existing barriers.)

Trump also might not want to throw stones where quality is concerned. If his fences haven't had quite the same erosion problem, it's probably because they require large gates at their base, which must be left open for months at a time to let floodwaters through. And given the ease with which Trump's fences can be cut, climbed, or defeated by ladders, it's a little dubious to say that they "work" at all.

How is this a problem?

• Not everything is about Donald Trump.

• It's wrong to steer federal contracts to political supporters.

What did Donald Trump do today?

He celebrated 197 miles of border wall he hasn't built.

Trump traveled to Arizona today for campaign events in a state he now desperately needs to win. The official reason for the trip, though, was to deliver remarks on "the Commemoration of the 200th Mile of New Border Wall" on the Mexican border—which puts the travel costs on the taxpayers rather than the Trump campaign.

Three and a half years into the Trump administration, the fenced portion of the U.S.-Mexico border is three miles longer—not 200. The rest has been repairs or renovations to existing barriers.

Those three miles, though, are in Trump's signature style. At his insistence, the easily-climbed bollard fence is painted black, so that it will retain heat in the summer. (This will increase the total cost of border fencing by $500 million or more.) 

Other issues have arisen with Trump's "big, beautiful" fence. Large sections of it will require floodgates to be kept wide open for much of the year. Fences put up in the remote areas favored by drug smugglers, furthest from active patrols, are easily destroyed by household tools—or, of course, ladders.

Immigration was Trump's signature issue in 2016, even though he has a long history of hiring immigrants legally and illegally. He promised that Mexico would pay for it, although immediately after taking office he begged the Mexican president not to publicly contradict him on this. American taxpayers have picked up the bill instead. 

But at this point it's not clear why Trump thinks Americans still see immigration as a pressing issue. Only 2% of Americans cited immigration as the biggest problem facing the country in a recent Gallup poll. At the top of that poll of the things that Americans were most worried about were economic issues (19%), poor leadership in government (21%), the coronavirus response (20%), and racism (19%). 

How is this a problem?

• Presidents who accomplish things people would actually be impressed by don't need to embellish.

• It's wrong to take credit for things you didn't do.

What did Donald Trump do today?

He got stuck on his wall.

Shortly after taking office, Trump abandoned all pretense that Mexico would pay for his proposed border wall—although he did privately beg the Mexican president to go along with the charade. Since then, Trump has done everything in his power to seem like he is taking action on the wall, including siphoning money away from schools for the children of military servicemembers and shutting down the federal government for a record 35 days. 

Everything, that is, except build a wall. All of one mile of new fencing has been completed, and Trump's campaign is reportedly worried that his base will notice the lack of progress. That may be why, on a day otherwise taken up with campaign stops and a staffer's Trump-property wedding, Trump made time to tweet in defense of a recent fence-related debacle.

Trump actually has the basic facts more or less correct here—but then, so does the "Fake News." A section of replacement fence fell over in 37-mile-per-hour winds because its concrete base had not yet cured, as was reported on at the time.

What Trump didn't mention is that the wall did very little damage because it only fell a few feet, onto tall trees long ago planted along the Mexican side of the border. In the unlikely event that potential border-crossers in the large city of Mexicali could not find a place to buy a ladder or basic power tools, and if they lacked the climbing skills of an eight-year-old, those trees would have provided an easy route to the top of the wall.

Why is this a problem?

• Just because something makes the president look bad doesn't mean it's "fake."

What did Donald Trump do today?

He fantasized about a non-existent version of the border wall he hasn't built in front of the people who aren't patrolling it.

Trump ended the day as he usually does on Fridays in winter, at his luxury resort in Florida. But first, he gave a speech to employees of the Customs and Border Protection agency. In it, he made the following statements about the border wall along the US-Mexico border, as he imagines it:

• "Right now we have 122 miles of wall that's been built."

This is false. For most of Trump's presidency, zero miles of new border fencing had been constructed. But as of last month, one mile of new fencing has been put up.

• "The panel on top -- just in case people want to know, because I would have loved it without the panel -- but actually, it's called an “anti-climb panel.” It makes it very tough to climb over the top."

Eight-year-old children have easily climbed replica fences that include the "anti-climb" panel.

• "So, in fact, we've had to bring in the fire departments and things to get people down. They've climbed the wall, sometimes with drugs on their back -- oftentimes. And they’re great climbers, but they couldn't get over the top anti-climb panel."

"Great climbers," or at least recreational climbers, have also tested the fence and its panel and gone over in a minute or less—including while juggling.

• "Here's another shot of a section -- the same section, actually, that's more advanced. And that's the way they put it up. They set it very deep into foundations and concrete. And it's steel with concrete in between. And if you've ever seen it, the bars are steel; they’re hollow. And they pour concrete inside and then put rebar in. So they have the rebar first; rebar is the steel. And they put it inside and then they pour the concrete."

Concrete and steel are tough, but as smugglers proved almost immediately, hardware stores sell handheld battery-powered tools that will cut through them in minutes.

• "We're now going to probably bring it in. We're going to spray-paint it after -- after it’s up. It gets spray-painted black. The black makes it extraordinarily hot, especially in areas along the Mexican border. It’s not known for cold weather. It’s known for quite hot weather. You don't have too much snow in this area, right?"

No, but large parts of the border area are known for seasonal rains and flash flooding, which is why fencing in those areas have floodgates that must be left open for months on end.

• "It's been almost 100 percent effective in the areas that it's been built."

It really hasn't.

Trump closed his depiction of the wall by instructing his audience of government employees, who presumably knew most of what he'd said was false, to "say 'Thank you, Mr. President."

Trump didn't talk about the cost of the wall, except to reference "hundreds of millions of dollars." In reality, Trump declared a national emergency to allow him to take billions of dollars, including $3.8 billion this year alone, from the U.S. military budget. Last year's cuts came from a wide variety of programs including a number of base schools attended by children of servicemembers. This year, some of the money is being taken from anti-drug operations.

Trump ran on a promise that Mexico, not American taxpayers or the national defense budget, would pay for the fence he has built one extra mile of. 

So what?

• It's wrong to take credit for things you haven't done.

• Presidents are supposed to care about whether their policies actually work.

• Voters who heard Trump say countless times that Mexico would pay for the wall might have thought Trump meant would actually build a wall and that Mexico would pay for it.

What did Donald Trump do today?

He lied about the border wall again.

As of today, Trump is in full vacation mode, and will be for at least the next two weeks—something that his own aides are telling reporters has them worried. But Trump never takes a break from tweeting, and today he tweeted about the defense appropriations bill he signed. 

He bragged that the "New planes, ships, missiles, rockets and equipment of every kind" it authorized the purchase of would all be "made right here in the USA." That's probably at least as true as it always is. 

But then Trump added "we got Border Wall (being built) funding. Nice!"—which isn't really true, because he didn't get what he asked for and no wall is "being built." Trump had asked for $5 billion dollars to build his much-talked about, still-never-built wall. What he got was $1.37 billion dollars in maintenance and upgrades for existing fenced areas. 

This is the same amount of money he got last year, after he shut the government down for over a month in a vain attempt to force Congress to budget more money for border fences. 

In a way, it's not really Trump's fault that zero miles of new "wall" have been built. Even if Congress—or most Americans—actually wanted Trump's fantasy of a wall, it couldn't have been built by now anyway. A wall that was actually useful in deterring or preventing border-crossing would have to be carefully sited and tailored to the local terrain, on land that had been purchased from the private owners it would have to cross. Trump hasn't done or even tried to do any of these things, which would take years.

Why should I care about this?

• It's wrong to lie about having done things you haven't done.

What did Donald Trump do today?

He bragged that not only were American taxpayers paying for his replacement border fence, but he'd tricked Congress to make it happen.

Trump visited a section of existing border fence today for a photo opportunity, where he continued to try to lower expectations for his long-abandoned campaign promise to build a 1000-mile wall that Mexico would pay for. Instead, he talked about a roughly 450-mile fence, only 110 miles of which will cover areas not currently fenced.

He also boasted about how he had used legal trickery to take American taxpayer money that Congress had appropriated for renovations to existing walls:

Q: Mr. President, all told, where — how much is this border wall costing the United States, and where is that money coming from? 

TRUMP: ...I'll give you an example, you know they tried to stymie us, by saying $1.6 billion, but only for renovations. Well, if they have a little eight foot wall, seven foot wall, or ten foot wall, that's like, you know, they just pull down the paddle [sic] and they walk across. And if we rip that down, I guess you could say that's renovation. So, you know, we've, uh, used some of this water [sic], some of this comes right out of the budget. Much of the wall comes out of the budget. But if we have even a small piece of steel going around that's called a renovation because we take the piece of steel out, we put up a thirty-foot wall, and, uh, so, in many ways, that, uh, works very much to our advantage.

In reality, the replacement fence near San Diego that Trump stood in front of is 18 feet high. In spite of Trump's shrinking promises for border fence construction, the total fenced area of the U.S.-Mexico border today is essentially exactly what it had been under President Obama. 

Trump long ago stopped even mentioning the possibility that Mexico would in any way foot the bill for the fence, a promise he made countless times during the 2016 campaign. 

Instead, he's shifted to a strategy of denying he ever said such a thing.

 

Why does this matter?

• Voters who believed Trump's campaign promises once may be less likely to believe them a second time.

• Past a certain point, lying becomes pathological.

What did Donald Trump do today?

He claimed to have helped the military, but got called out by his own Air Force.

In what looks like an attempt to mount a pre-emptive defense against impeachment, Trump tweeted out a number of reasons why he shouldn't be impeached. (His central argument was that a president can't be impeached as long as he's doing a "good (great!) job.") None Trump's claims had to do with his actual innocence of the various potential charges, and most of them were false anyway.

One particular claim—that he had "rebuilt [the] military"—was fact-checked by the United States Air Force. In a report that came into public view today, an Air Force review panel concluded that Trump's raiding of the Defense Department budget to build or replace border fencing is creating risks to national security.

Trump has effectively cancelled 127 military projects in order to finally make some progress on the wall he campaigned on (although obviously not the part about Mexico paying for it). Some of them, like construction or renovation of nine base schools, will only affect the quality of life for the families of servicemembers. Others, like replacing the malfunctioning boiler needed to keep an Alaska airbase habitable in winter, will directly affect military performance. And some, like shoring up security at a military base in Turkey, directly threaten servicemembers' safety.

The Air Force is not the only branch to object to Trump's attempts to make his political problem a military problem. In March, the commandant of the Marine Corps, Gen. Robert Neller, warned that deploying Marines to the U.S.-Mexico border would pose an "unacceptable risk to Marine Corps combat readiness and solvency."

So what?

• The lives and safety of American military forces are more important than Donald Trump's political problems.

• Congress, not the president, decides whether or not the president should be impeached.

• Trump's opinion that he is doing a "good (great!) job" puts him in a pretty small minority.

What did Donald Trump do today?

He tried to play off a pardon scheme as a "joke."

Citing Trump's own aides, the Washington Post reported yesterday that Trump is so desperate to make some kind of progress on his long-promised border wall that he told staff he would pardon them if they had to break laws to get it done. Specifically, he ordered staff to simply seize property from private landowners without going through the legal process of eminent domain. (Trump knows only too well how uncertain that process is: he once tried and failed to get Atlantic City to use its power to seize an elderly widow's house so that he could build a casino parking lot.)

No one doubts Trump's anxiety over the wall. He's privately admitted he doesn't think it will actually do anything to stop border crossings, but he believes it's popular with likely Trump voters. (It's much less popular closer to the actual border, where landowners would be affected by it.)

Having failed in his first two and a half years to build even a single mile of new wall, or to get Mexico to pay a dime for it, Trump is now insisting that the whole project be done by the election. In the real world, experts think that even the most modest plans would take ten years to build, and that's before Trump's personal esthetic touches are added.

Trump didn't deny having dangled pardons to induce people to break the law. Instead, he explained it this way today: he was just joking.

This isn't the first time Trump has pretended he was "joking" after getting caught saying something he regretted. Last week, after looking to the heavens and calling himself "the chosen one"—on the same day he retweeted someone who called him "the King of Israel"—Trump backtracked by insisting that it was a joke. (Specifically, he said that reporters knew it was a joke because he was smiling when he said it. He wasn't.)

Trump was also "joking" when he begged Russia on live TV to hack Hillary Clinton's e-mails. In that case, he didn't reveal the "joke" until almost three years later. Russian agents apparently didn't get the joke—they began attacking Democratic Party servers that very same day.

Trump also likes to "joke" about calling his political enemies traitors or un-American, something that has led to a surge in violent crime committed in his name. He's "joked" that President Obama was behind the Islamic State, and that Democrats who failed to clap for him at a speech were treasonous.

Why does this matter?

• Conservatives who voted for Trump might not like how willing he is to break the law to seize private property.

• Dangling pardons to get people to break the law isn't a great idea for a president. 

• There is a difference between a lie and a joke.

What did Donald Trump do today?

He insisted that he really, truly does have an "absolute right" to force American companies out of China.

Trump spent much of yesterday enduring mockery over his proclamation that he was "hereby order[ing]" American companies to divest from China. The bad press was magnified by the fact that his staff, caught off guard by the tweets, had no idea what he was talking about. By the time he was en route to France, Trump had finally found a justification for his "order" that American companies abandon hundred of billions of dollars of investment in China.

There is such a law. But it does not give Trump the "absolute right" he claimed yesterday to force American companies out of China, or even to start planning to do so. It really, really, really doesn't, as experts on law and trade were quick to point out. 

Even if he could, of course, it would be a disaster for American businesses, which have vastly more money invested in China than Chinese businesses do in the United States.

Trump frequently uses the phrase "absolute right" to describe things he's completely powerless in legal or practical terms to do, like fire Robert Mueller, or completely close the Mexico border to legal traffic, or give himself a pardon for federal crimes he's committed.

All that having been said, there are a few businesses Trump really does have an absolute right to pull out of China—or at least to ask his daughter and son-in-law to. No Trump family-owned businesses have announced any plans to follow Trump's "order."

Who cares?

• It's bad if the president thinks he can do whatever he wants.

• It's very bad if the president thinks he has the authority to do things that would be incredibly stupid even if legal.

• People who voted for Trump thinking he would be pro-business may be upset to learn he's more like a communist when it suits him.

What did Donald Trump do today?

He consoled people, as only he can.

This morning, before brief visits to El Paso and Dayton, where gunmen have recently committed mass murder, Trump said that his words "bring people together." He also said that he would "stay above the political fray."

Also today, Trump insulted Beto O'Rourke, Ohio Sen. Sherrod Brown, Dayton mayor Nan Whaley, former Vice-President Joe Biden, Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren, and South Korea (but not North Korea). He attacked the "fake news" media, Rep. Joaquin Castro and his brother, presidential candidate Julian Castro, CNN, Fox News anchor Shepherd Smith, the Federal Reserve (all but one of whose governors he appointed), the New York Times and "Radical Left Democrats" in general. Trump also equated the so-called "antifa," or anti-fascist movement, with the white supremacist ideology that motivated the El Paso terrorist attack. 

(This is a partial list, as full transcripts of Trump's public speeches are not always immediately available.)

Trump's visits outraged many in both cities, especially in El Paso, where last Sunday's terrorist attack was committed by a white supremacist who used Trump's own language as a justification for murdering Latinos. Trump last visited El Paso in February for a campaign rally—he still owes the city's police department more than half a million dollars as a result—and denounced Mexicans as the reason for the city's supposedly high crime rate. Before the terrorist attack committed against Latinos, El Paso was one of the safest cities in the United States.

Why should I care about this?

• Donald Trump was not actually the victim of these attacks.

• Not being able to control your temper, or behave appropriately in social situations, is a sign of mental illness.

• White supremacist terrorists don't think Trump is on their side for no reason.

What did Donald Trump do today?

He tried to distance himself from the El Paso mass murderer's interpretation of his words.

Yesterday, a 21-year-old man drove ten hours to El Paso, Texas. He posted a white nationalist screed online explaining his motivations for what he was about to do, then opened fire at a Wal-Mart, killing 20 people and injuring at least 26 more. 

Trump has spent the weekend on the golf course (with a quick detour to crash a wedding at his Bedminster luxury resort). He—or staff using his account—has commented on the shooting mostly through Twitter, and so far he's avoided reporters and cameras. The exception was a brief comment to reporters as he traveled back to Washington, in which he called the weekend's shootings a mental health matter.

The actual reason for his shyness in the face of an act of domestic terrorism, though, is that the manifesto the terrorist posted closely follows Trump's own rhetoric and policies on the subject of Hispanic migrants.

Trump is clearly worried about a repeat of the Charlottesville situation, where he was extremely reluctant to condemn racially motivated domestic terrorism for fear of upsetting his political base. (His solution, which was to praise the "very fine people" in a crowd carrying torches and chanting Nazi slogans, didn't go over well.) Once again, Trump has so far refused to mention the racist motivation that the murderer acknowledged, or to call the attack terrorism.

One thing Trump did do today was play games with his Twitter account. He deleted his own generic tweets on the shooting, then reposted them verbatim a few hours later. This meant that comments on the original tweets—which were mostly links to Trump's own tweets on subjects that he and the terrorist explicitly agreed on—were no longer visible.

Here are just a few of the general areas where Trump and Patrick Crusius, the apparent mass murderer of 20 people yesterday, agree. 

Invasion

This attack is a response to the Hispanic invasion of Texas. They are the instigators, not me. I am simply defending my country from cultural and ethnic replacement brought on by an invasion.

Trump routinely describes the United States as being the victim of an "invasion" from Mexico.

Trump, June 6, 2019: And now I've told Mexico, if you don't stop this onslaught, this invasion, people get angry when I use the word invasion, people like Nancy Pelosi that honestly they don't know what the hell they're talking about. I watched her -- she was saying we have to protect Mexico, we have to take care of Mexico, look, I'm dealing with Mexico right now. They send in $500 billion worth of drugs, they kill 100,000 people, they ruin a million families every year if you look at that, that's really an invasion without the guns.

Trump, June 4, 2019: A lot of people are saying that. Mexico has something to prove. But I don't want to hear that they're run by the cartels. You understand. You report on it all the time. A lot of people do. That would be a terrible thing. Mexico should step up and stop this onslaught, this invasion into our country, John.

Trump, April 6, 2019: You know, there are a lot of advantages too, a lot of advantages. I'm OK with it. I don't want to do it, but I'm OK with it, I'll do it. I'll do whatever is necessary to stop an invasion of our country. That's what it is. At the heart of the crisis are the 9th Circuit rulings in the Flores case and the Trafficking Victims, Protection Reauthorization Act, driving a staggering surge of illegal families and minors into the hands of our incredible border patrol people.

Democrats and immigrants

America will soon become a one party-state. The Democrat party will own America and they know it. They have already begun the transition by pandering heavily to the Hispanic voting bloc in the first Democratic Debate. They intend to use open borders, free healthcare for illegals, citizenship, and more to enact a political coup by importing and then legalizing millions of new voters.

Trump has falsely accused Democrats of exactly these things countless times.

Trump, August 1, 2019: So many of these mayors right now, you know what they are? They're in jail, that's where they are. Republicans believe that every parent has the right to send their children to the school of their choice. But the greatest betrayal committed by the Democrats is their support for open borders, and these open borders would overwhelm schools and hospitals, drain public services, and flood communities with poisonous drugs... Democrat lawmakers care more about illegal aliens than they care about their own constituents. They put foreign citizens before American citizens.

Trump, June 11, 2019: Illegal immigration, not only threatens public safety, but it drains the public treasury, overcrowding schools and hospitals, and depleting the resources low-income Americans depend on. You see what's happening in California, where they just announced a plan to give free health care to illegal immigrants when it could very well be used, all of that money, to provide housing and hospitalization and medical for the rising number of homeless people, then the Democratic run cities of Los Angeles and San Francisco. Do you see what's happening to those cities?

Trump, July 28, 2016: Hillary Clinton will give citizenship to illegal immigrants who compete directly against vulnerable American workers for the right to high-paying jobs, safe housing and good schools.

Giving refugees "incentive" to leave

They come here as economic immigrants, not for asylum reasons. This is an encouraging sign that the Hispanic population is willing to return to their home countries if given the right incentive. An incentive that myself and many other patriotic Americans will provide.

Trump openly admits that he is trying to make the experience of seeking asylum so dangerous and terrifying that it will discourage other migrants from attempting it. He's also said that aslyum-seekers are lying about their claims.

Trump, May 19, 2019: You look at some of these people; you want protection from them. And they're saying, "We need protection from our country." In the meantime, they're carrying their country's flag thousands -- 2,000 miles walking up the journey. It's a big con job. That's what it is.

Secretary of Homeland Security John Kelly, March 6, 2017: Let me start by saying I would do almost anything to deter the people from Central America to getting on this very, very dangerous network that brings them up through Mexico to the United States. ...Yes, I am considering, in order to deter more movement along this terribly dangerous network, I am considering exactly that [separating children from their parents].

Trump, July 3, 2019: If Illegal Immigrants are unhappy with the conditions in the quickly built or refitted detentions centers, just tell them not to come. All problems solved!

Crusius ended his manifesto with a pre-emptive defense of how Trump would be viewed by the "fake news."

Why does this matter?

• A president who can't bring himself to acknowledge terrorism, can't defend the country from it.

• A president who can't take responsibility for the effects of his own words and policies is unfit for office.

• It's bad if the president is playing golf and going to parties hours after a terrorist mass murder.

• Racists and white nationalists don't love Donald Trump for no reason.

What did Donald Trump do today?

He said he was negotiating with Mexico, a claim denied by Mexico's chief negotiator.

Trump has been furious about news reports showing that his "negotiations" with Mexico over his most recent tariff bluff yielded nothing more than what Mexico was already doing. In tweets and in person today, he claimed that he had concluded further secret negotiations with Mexico.

They are so secret, in fact, that Mexico doesn't seem to have heard of them. At a press conference of his own today, Mexican Secretary of Foreign Affairs Marcelo Ebrard flatly contradicted Trump's early morning tweets. 

Trump has also claimed recently (and in all capital letters) that Mexico had made unspecified agreements to buy more U.S. farm products. Ebrard also said today that this wasn't true:

As the tariffs aren’t imposed, he [Trump] would be calculating, I suppose, there would be a boost to economic growth and that that will increase our imports, including grains. That’s what I think he’s saying. But we don’t have a specific agreement on agricultural products. 

How is this a bad thing?

• There's no such thing as a deal with a country that's saying there's no deal.

• It's wrong to say you've accomplished something when you haven't.

• It's bad if other countries find it necessary to call the President of the United States a liar in public.