Ok, now I am really confused. I predicted that Donald Trump would use every major issue that came before him to push for funding for his precious wall as part of the deal. But now I have been proven wrong twice. First Trump agreed to a short-term extension of government funding and raising the debt ceiling without getting wall funding. And now just yesterday, after a dinner with the two top Democratic party leaders Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer, Trump seems to have arrived at some kind of deal with them to restore the DACA program that does not include funding for the wall.

Donald Trump said on Thursday he was “fairly close” to a deal with Democrats to protect so-called “Dreamers”, young undocumented migrants brought to the US as children.

Seeming to confirm the outlines of the agreement described by Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi of the House on Wednesday night, Trump told reporters: “We’re working on a plan for Daca,” Barack Obama’s Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (Daca) program which he cancelled last week.

That deal would include “massive border security”, he said, but “the wall will come later”.
Asked if he favored an “amnesty” for the nearly 800,000 young immigrants with Daca status, which protects against deportation and gives access to work permits, Trump shouted back: “The word is Daca.”

He claimed he had spoken to congressional Republican leaders Paul Ryan and Mitch McConnell and they were both “on board”.

So what is Trump up to? Why is he suddenly working with the Democratic leaders? Why were the two top Republican leaders not invited to this dinner and involved in hashing out this deal or the previous deals on the debt ceiling and government funding? Why is he not pushing for wall funding as strongly as one might expect?

Unless there some secret agreement that we are not privy to, the only thing that I can think of is that so far Trump has failed to get any major achievements to his name by working exclusively with the Republican leadership and freezing out the Democrats. Trump seems to be someone with no principles or interest in actual policies and governing except for how it reflects on him. Given his desire to boast about ‘wins’ and his ability to make deals, perhaps he has decided that if he works with Democrats and makes deals with them, then Republicans in Congress will have no choice but to go along with whatever he says and, voila!, he has legislative ‘wins’ that he can brag about.

The question is what his base will think about his working with Democrats, restoring DACA (assuming it does happen and he does not backtrack later), raising the debt ceiling, and putting the wall on the back burner. Yes, they are deeply loyal to him. But they also really, really love their wall and hate immigrants of color, the people most affected by DACA. Initial reports suggest that Trump supporters are not happy.

Congressman Steve King of Iowa tweeted at the president that, if the latest reports are true, “Trump base is blown up, destroyed, irreparable, and disillusioned beyond repair. No promise is credible.”

One of Mr Trump’s most fervent supporters, Ann Coulter, tweeted: “At this point, who DOESN’T want Trump impeached?”

Breitbart, the website run by Mr Trump’s former chief strategist Steve Bannon, ran the headline, “Amnesty Don” and accused the president of “a full-fledged cave”.

Pro-Trump Fox News host Sean Hannity appeared dismayed, tweeting that “weak Republicans have betrayed voters” and pushed Mr Trump “into arms of political suicide”.

Yet another confused and chaotic day in Trumpworld.