Trump throws tantrum, demands government shutdown unless he gets his border wall

Donald Trump is rapidly approaching the end of the first 100 days of his presidency, a hallmark he considered so important that he drew up a contract with voters on all the big-ticket items he would accomplish within this time — a pledge he now calls “ridiculous.”

He has now tried twice to enact a ban on travel into the United States from Muslim countries, but his most recent attempt got smacked down by a federal judge in Hawaii, drawing a racist remark from Attorney General Jeff Sessions about how “an island in the Pacific” could have the right to challenge Trump. His attempt to repeal Obamacare, which he promised he’d do on day one, was also a failure — the GOP could not even get it through the House, despite Trump’s attempts to threaten congressmen.

And now Trump’s signature promise to build “a big, beautiful wall” on the Mexican border is in trouble, too.

It was obvious from the outset he was never going to get Mexico to pay for it, because that is not how anything works. But in the past week, he tried to threaten a government shutdown if Democrats did not allow funding for the wall in the omnibus appropriations bill. Democrats stood firm, knowing that a shutdown at a time when Republicans control all three branches of government would be laid entirely at the GOP’s feet.

On Tuesday, news broke that Trump had caved, stating in conversation with conservative reporters at the White House that he would sign a spending bill without the border wall and try to fund it separately in September. Kellyanne Conway echoed this on Fox News.

But almost immediately after this broke, Trump reversed course in a Twitter tantrum, attacking the media for claiming he caved:

Don't let the fake media tell you that I have changed my position on the WALL. It will get built and help stop drugs, human trafficking etc.

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) April 25, 2017

According to CNN’s David Wright, a White House official then confirmed that the administration does expect money for the border wall “this week,” prompting a defiant response from Democratic lawmakers:

Heading back to D.C. where @HouseDemocrats will STOP Trump's effort to fund ineffective border wall #Resist

— Hakeem Jeffries (@RepJeffries) April 25, 2017

Trump clearly never understood what a complicated job being president is. He spent his whole life in the private sector, exploiting inherited wealth and legal loopholes to bully, cheat, and stiff everyone he cut a deal with. Now that he is in government, where he must negotiate with coequal branches that have checks and balances on his power, he is coming up empty-handed at every turn, and visibly falling to pieces over his mounting failures.