Trump spends Sunday melting down after being humiliated over his Mexico 'deal'

Trump spent Sunday like he so often does: melting down on Twitter. This time, it was because everyone realized the Mexico tariff deal he was bragging about closing was actually in place months ago.

At the end of May, Trump announced he would impose massive tariffs on Mexico starting on June 10, unless Mexico stemmed the flow of migrants entering the United States.

Less than two weeks later, Trump announced on Friday that he’d “reached a signed agreement” with Mexico and would indefinitely suspend the tariffs. He added that Mexico had also agreed to “immediately begin buying large quantities of agricultural product from our great patriot farmers.”

By late Saturday the story had already fallen apart. As part of his declaration Friday, Trump said Mexico would deploy its National Guard throughout the country with priority to the southern border. Mexico agreed to that back in March 2019 in talks between then-Department of Homeland Security head Kirstjen Nielsen and the Mexican secretary of the interior.

Trump also announced an expansion to let people seeking asylum stay in Mexico while their asylum cases were pending. But that part was agreed to last year via a “painstakingly negotiated” diplomatic agreement, according to the New York Times.

Sunday morning Trump got up to rail about the “false report” in the “failing” New York Times and to brag that other administrations hadn’t been able to get a deal with Mexico done. He also tweeted, confusingly, that “for many years, Mexico was not being cooperative on the Border in things we had, or didn’t have.”

For good measure, Trump fell back on pretending that there was a secret part of the deal — something “not mentioned in yesterday [sic] press release, one in particular, were agreed upon. That will be announced at the appropriate time.”

Trump also gave himself an out, saying that if there’s no deal “we can always go back to our previous, very profitable, position of Tariffs – But I don’t believe that will be necessary.” Given that the tariffs had not yet gone into place, they certainly couldn’t have been profitable.

Trump also returned to his familiar assertion that the media is out to get him, saying that the Times and CNN would do anything possible “to see our Country fail” and that they were “truly The Enemy of the People.”

By Sunday evening, though nothing had changed in the reporting on the Mexico deal, Trump was taking a victory lap, saying the story “has now been proven shockingly false and untrue, bad reporting, and the paper is embarrassed by it. The only problem is that they knew it was Fake News before it went out. Corrupt Media!”

This entire episode just shows he isn’t the dealmaker he pretends to be and he can’t stand to be called out on it.

Published with permission of The American Independent Foundation.