Trump got outplayed by border hawk Biden — and doesn’t know it

Late last month, the president said he would “shut down” the US-Mexican border if Congress passed a bipartisan immigration bill that is currently stalled in the Senate. That was a shock to many.

When it comes to congressional negotiations over border policy and immigration reform, there has been a formula. It “was always a swap,” wrote the Times’ Jonathan Weisman. “The GOP got border security; Democrats got a pathway to citizenship or legalization.” That’s been the case three times since the 2000s. Each time, the formula failed

This time, Biden and the Democrats changed course. They dropped their usual demand for legalization, as they “prepared to give away the store,” Weisman said. The new bill became a “border security-only bill” that sacrificed “all leverage for legalization.” Then, on January 26, the president added more uncharacteristic behavior. He said that he’d “shut down” the border if the Congress gave him the power to do it.

The question was why.

After last night, an answer has emerged.

The president snatched the border as a campaign issue out of Donald Trump’s hands. He’s snatched it and Trump doesn’t seem to know it’s been snatched. In the end, Biden is good at politics. Trump isn’t.

The Republicans in the Senate are running away from legislation that they say would toughen deportation policy and reform asylum laws. They are running, after having said that they wanted it, indeed, after having said that it’s a matter of national security and protecting our way of life. The Democrats were ready to compromise. This was the GOP’s best shot. Then Trump stepped in and said nah nah nah.

“I understand the former president is desperately trying to stop this bill, because he’s not interested in solving the border problem,” Biden said. “He wants a political issue to run against me. They’ve all but said that, across the board. No one really denies that, that I’m aware of."

He called their bluff. They said that the border was in “crisis.” They said that migrants were “invading.” Some of them even agreed with Donald Trump when he said that migrants are “poisoning the blood” of the country. They didn’t mean it. Biden knew that they didn’t mean it and proved that they didn’t mean it by dropping the Democrats’ usual demands for a pathway to citizenship, moving to the right, knowing that Trump wouldn’t permit his party to take away his talking point.

As Bloomberg’s Jonathan Tamari wrote last night: “Not long ago, if you had Mitch McConnell, the Wall Street Journal’s editorial board and the United States Chamber of Commerce all endorsing a deal negotiated by a conservative Oklahoma senator, it would be a slam dunk with GOP senators. Those folks aren't running the show anymore.”

But Trump isn’t running the show either.

He used to own the issue of “border security.”

Not anymore.

Yesterday, during Biden’s remarks at the White House on the stalled Senate talks, CNN’s Manu Raju said that he “pointedly blames Donald Trump for the expected defeat of the bipartisan border bill. [That happened today.] He blames Trump for wanting to make this a campaign issue and says ‘he'd rather weaponize’ the border than solve it. He calls on the GOP to show ‘some spine’ and stand up to Trump.”

Punch Bowl News’ Max Cohen added that the president said that “if the border bill fails, he'll remind American voters every day until the election that the reason the border isn't secure is because of Trump.”

All of a sudden, Biden is the border hawk! As long as the Republicans refuse to walk the walk, that’s not going to change. Trump, meanwhile, is left looking like he wants to complain more than act. All this makes the push by House Republicans to impeach the secretary of Homeland Security, Alejandro Mayorkas, seem especially weak. GOP Senator Kevin Cramer said as much: “What's rich to me is the speaker says the [border] bill in the Senate is … dead on arrival. And then they proceed impeaching a cabinet secretary, which is obviously dead on arrival.”

Biden outplayed him. He will continue to, because in the end, Trump just isn’t good at politics. He’s been running the same campaign for years. He can’t or won’t adjust to circumstances. Another politician would change course when things go sideways. Not Trump! He blames others, especially enemies, rather than take responsibility for failures. And because of that, he’s almost certainly completely oblivious to the fact that his best campaign issue has just been snatched for good.