POLITICS

Donald Trump Spent the Government Shutdown Hoping Someone Else Would Solve It for Him

The president wants whatever the last person who talked to him wants.

This unified Republican government shutdown came to an abrupt end on Monday afternoon, as Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer took to the floor and announced that Washington would reopen for business for a few more weeks. 

According to Schumer, Mitch McConnell agreed to hold a "neutral and fair" immigration debate in exchange for a few Democratic votes that allowed him to clear that 60-vote threshold. Perhaps the most incredible part of this deal, other than the fact that Democrats were willing to accept the word of a man who seemingly lives to break it, is that it came despite the fact that President Donald Trump, the single most important member of the Republican Party, still has no earthy idea what he wants.

As the government shutdown continued for its second day on Sunday, one thing was clear to both sides of the negotiations to end it: The president was either unwilling or unable to articulate the immigration policy he wanted, much less understand the nuances of what it would involve.

Both sides have reason to be confused. Each time Mr. Trump has edged toward compromise with Democrats, he has appeared to be reined in by his own staff, which shares the hawkish immigration stance that fueled his campaign. And Republican leaders, bruised by past experience with a president who has rarely offered them consistent cover on a politically challenging issue, are loath to guess at his intentions.

Trump spent the weekend telling Republican legislators that he wanted to make some sort of deal with Democrats. But instead of offering any ideas of his own, according to CNN, he pleaded with them to bring their proposals to him. Thus, each time that an entirely-reasonable resolution appeared within sight, his party's faction of immigration hardliners—the polite term used these days for "xenophobes in Congress"—would yank hard on the puppet strings attached to Trump's limbs, ensuring that only the hands they wanted him to grasp were within his reach. "As long as Stephen Miller is in charge of negotiating immigration," an exasperated Lindsey Graham told reporters, "we are going nowhere."

At no point was this presidency-by-committee dynamic more apparent than the bipartisan meeting held at the White House last week shortly before the shutdown began. Administration staffers reportedly distributed to lawmakers a detailed list of border security priorities that it purportedly expected to receive in any deal. The only problem? Trump, surprised, told attendees that he had never seen the list before. This would almost funny if it weren't so unsettling: The nation's chief executive, in that moment, was whoever last had access to the West Wing copy machine.

During his first year in office, Trump has been most dangerous not when he pushes any coherent policy agenda, but instead when it is clear to everyone that he has no agenda in the first place. In a power vacuum of unprecedented scope, people like Miller and Tom Cotton and John Kelly are capable of using him as an uncritical cipher who can be manipulated into tweeting their preferred bullet points verbatim, except with more randomly-capitalized words and stray quotation marks. It is not a coincidence that in less than six months, Trump went from referring to DACA recipients "great kids" to... well, this.

The Democrats are turning down services and security for citizens in favor of services and security for non-citizens. Not good!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 22, 2018

Democrats are holding our Military hostage over their desire to have unchecked illegal immigration. Can’t let that happen!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 20, 2018

The shutdown may be over, but it ended in spite of Trump, not because of him. "Since our meeting in the Oval Office on Friday, the president and I have not spoken," Schumer took great pains to note on Monday. "The great deal-making president sat on the sidelines." And from now until the moment McConnell holds the DACA vote he promised, everyone in Washington will be frantically trying to be the last person in Donald Trump's ear before he makes a decision. gq.com