By Max Boot [conservative]
Washington Post
President Trump is the flim flam man.
He routinely
takes credit for resolving crises that he himself created — and that,
on closer examination, he has not really resolved. “If I had not been
elected president of the United States, we would right now, in my
opinion, be in a major war with North Korea,” he said in January, even
though he was the one who raised the danger level with his reckless
threats of “fire and fury” and he has not succeeded in stopping North
Korea’s nuclear and missile programs.
After offending both Mexico and Canada with his steel and aluminum tariffs and blustery ultimatums, Trump claimed credit
for negotiating “the USMCA, the spectacular & very popular new
Trade Deal that replaces NAFTA, the worst Trade Deal in the history of
the U.S.A.” — even though, in truth, there is scant difference between
the two accords.
Then,
on Friday evening, just days before the tariffs he had threatened to
impose on Mexico were to take effect, Trump announced an agreement “to
greatly reduce, or eliminate, Illegal Immigration coming from Mexico.”
You
would think by now that even the president’s supporters might be
slightly skeptical when he claims spectacular achievements with details
to come. But like Charlie Brown trying to kick the football that Lucy
always snatches away, they immediately tried to score political points
off the nebulous Friday-night announcement.
“The threat of
tariffs got Mexico to agree to take unprecedented steps to control
illegal migration,” crowed Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), who once called
Trump a “con artist” before joining the sycophancy caucus. That
caucus’s honorary chairman, Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.), who once
tweeted that Trump is “an opportunist” who is “not fit to be
President,” chirped:
“I appreciate President Trump’s bold leadership and applaud this
agreement.” The New York Post — owned by News Corp., whose chairman,
Rupert Murdoch, reportedly called Trump a “phony” before becoming his
courtier — opined: “Trump left his Mexico critics stunned, speechless.”
Ah,
if only Trump’s toadies had waited a few hours, they might have avoided
an own goal. For on Saturday, the New York Times revealed
that “the deal to avert tariffs that President Trump announced with
great fanfare on Friday night consists largely of actions that Mexico
had already promised to take in prior discussions with the United States
over the past several months.” And those actions — deploying Mexico’s
ineffectual national guard to its border with Guatemala and allowing
some asylum seekers to remain in Mexico while their cases are
adjudicated in the United States — are unlikely to have much of an
impact on undocumented migration.
But what of Trump’s boast
that “MEXICO HAS AGREED TO IMMEDIATELY BEGIN BUYING LARGE QUANTITIES OF
AGRICULTURAL PRODUCT FROM OUR GREAT PATRIOT FARMERS!”? The use of ALL
CAPS — a little too insistent — and the employment of a description for
farmers that sounds as if it was lifted from Pravda, circa 1935, should
indicate that this fanfaronade, too, wasn’t quite on the level. And,
indeed, Mexican officials told Bloomberg News on Saturday they never
discussed agricultural purchases in the days leading up the ballyhooed
accord.
Our Great Patriot Leader was reduced to claiming
that somewhere out there — perhaps in an alternative universe where he
really is an “extremely stable genius” — there exists a super-duper,
top-secret accord that “will be announced at the appropriate time” but
that, on this planet, neither Mexican nor U.S. officials seemed to know
anything about.
The
striking thing is that Trump’s con-artistry continues to find so many
willing marks who will remain forever convinced, notwithstanding all
that is reported otherwise, that he made Mexico bow before his
awesomeness. They are abetted, these Trump dupes, by cynical Republicans
on Capitol Hill who know this achievement is as phony as a degree from
Trump University but pretend otherwise to flatter the mercurial and
egomaniacal occupant of the Oval Office. They are secretly breathing a
sigh of relief that Trump’s flimflammery averted a potentially
catastrophic economic showdown. If they had a little more backbone,
these Republicans would see that they have more power than they realize:
It was GOP opposition, not Mexican concessions, that made Trump back
down from his tariff threats.
What happens
next? Well, if migration at the southern border declines in the next few
months for any reason, Trump will claim credit, just as he claims
credit for a fortune that he inherited from his father and an economic
expansion that he inherited from President Barack Obama. And if
migration doesn’t decline, Trump will holler that Mexico has betrayed
him and will engage in another round of brinkmanship that might not have
such a happy ending. Trump’s amnesiac supporters will not hold the
success or failure of this faux accord against him; their faith runs too
deep to be shaken by mere facts (a.k.a. “fake news”).
But
other countries will look at this episode and conclude (a) that Trump
is a bad bluffer and (b) that he is quick to declare victory even when
he hasn’t won anything. The United States’ credibility is eroding as
rapidly as the presidency’s dignity and decorum.
