The myth of Trump the deal-maker

His first term shows he can't pass legislation

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One of the most enduring myths about Donald Trump is that he’s supposedly good at something called “deals”. What exactly “deal” means in this context is always left a bit unclear, but it’s something to do with getting a good outcome for himself (or America) at the expense of someone else. The mythos of the deal has been central to Trump’s image ever since he appeared on The Apprentice. The irony of the whole thing, of course, is that Trump has a pretty bad record in business - but he did do a good job of playing someone good at business on TV, creating the basis for the myth.

The other ironic thing is that what Trump has actually been really good at during his career in politics is not substance, but image. It’s not deals he’s good at - it’s marketing. And as he heads into a new term in office in which his party has a razor-thin majority in Congress, that deficiency could cripple him.

We got a great reminder of this last week when Trump had a phone call with Mexico’s president, Claudia Sheinbaum. During the call and in a series of tweets afterwards, Trump pressed Mexico to do all that it could to stop both drugs and asylum seekers (two very different things) coming over the border into the U.S. If Sheinbaum didn’t comply, Trump said, the U.S. would hit it with 25% trade tariffs. Sheinbaum responded by pointing out that Mexico already does all it can to stop both things, whereupon Trump promptly hailed himself as a once-in-a-generation diplomatic genius who had now convinced Mexico to stop the flow of asylum seekers and drugs into the United States. Crisis over!

Trump has at least two ways of playing this game. One is to manufacture a crisis one day and then claim to have solved it the next. The other is to plunge into some ongoing situation, flail around in a way that generates a lot of noise and bluster, then claim to have achieved a game-changing “deal”. The Sheinbaum call was an example of the former, whereas Trump’s summit diplomacy with North Korea in his first term was an example of the latter.

This kind of marketing clearly convinces some of the low-information voters who make up Trump’s electoral coalition. But when it comes to actually solving problems through “deals”, the results have been incredibly meagre.

North Korea is a good example, but I think a more relevant example for the upcoming presidential term is Trump’s approach to domestic legislative battles. As I wrote last week, Trump’s diplomacy with North Korea was treated with indulgence and indifference by most members of his own party - it was pretty clear nothing was going to come of it, but there seemed little harm in letting him try. But what we tend to forget now is that Trump also oversaw a series of disastrous legislative negotiations in 2017 - 19 which, when combined, basically led to Republicans squandering their control of Congress and failing to notch any legislative achievements beyond their tax cuts.

A good example was the administration’s push to negotiate a change to America’s immigration laws, which peaked in the summer of 2018. I think revisiting this incident is worthwhile in order to think through what Trump’s attempt at legislation might look like in his second term.

The whole thing started in a very Trumpian way: with an extreme act. In April of 2018, his administration had begun its “family separation” policy at the border - tearing toddlers and babies from their mother’s arms and spiriting them away into the interior, where some have still not been reunited with their parents. As public outrage swirled around the administration, Republicans in Congress thought the moment might be ripe to pass a comprehensive immigration reform bill that would end family separation but boost border security in other ways.

This was exactly the sort of “deal” that Trump pretends to excel at. First, he promises - or in this case, actually carries out - some extreme course of action. Secondly, the theory goes, his opponents get overwhelmed and shocked into surrendering. Thirdly, they give him concessions, and he gets his deal. All it would take was the smart and savvy application of pressure - and what else would we expect from a master deal-maker?

But here is where the difficulties of moving from marketing to implementation got in Trump’s way. Even with a fairly large majority in Congress, it was difficult for the GOP to put together a deal which would please both their moderate and their extreme members. It had to increase border security while also throwing a bone to moderates, for instance by providing a pathway to citizenship for people who had being brought into the United States illegally as children (the so-called Dreamers). Some Democrats might even have been persuaded to vote for it.

It would have taken a competent, if not a master, strategist to get results in this situation. Instead, we got vintage Trump. For most of the time the bill was being negotiated, he said nothing at all. Occasionally he would randomly emit a tweet which torpedoed some key aspect of the talks just as negotiations were beginning to show promise. At others he would tell a reporter that he thought Congress shouldn’t bother trying to negotiate a deal, or that it was too difficult. He seemed to make no effort to actually keep in touch with how the negotiations were going and give any constructive input at all.

Then, as the negotiations approached their most delicate moment, he met with the Republican Congressional caucus. Finally, his allies thought, the moment for the master negotiator to make his move had come. But that’s not what happened. Instead, Trump delivered a rambling monologue about how great his presidency was and how much the media hated him. He resurrected his claim about how he could shoot someone on Fifth Avenue and lose no support. “I’m with you 1,000%!” he told them - only he also completely neglected to say what version of the bill he supported, or even to mention immigration much at all. Then, a few days later, he said he thought the lawmakers were wasting their time and should give up on the bill.

Without the Republican president providing them with political cover, Republican Congressmen lost interest in putting their careers on the line to vote for a controversial bill. It collapsed, going down 301-121 in a vote. Somehow Donald Trump’s reputation as a “dealmaker” didn’t collapse with it.

This chaotic and incompetent approach to legislation matters a lot now, because Republicans are going into the next Congress with a much smaller majority than in 2017 - 19. They’ll end up with only two or three more votes than the Democrats, basically no majority at all. Just a couple of defections will leave Republicans incapable of passing anything at all, even a budget.

Shepherding legislation through a chamber like that usually requires tact, skill, and attention. It requires a master dealmaker. Instead, America is about to have a marketer-in-chief - one who is going to struggle mightily to pass any sort of agenda.

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