IT SURE LOOKS THAT WAY: Trump Blew His Chances of Building the Wall.

Wait, Now the President Thinks People Are Too Focused on ‘The Wall’?

This morning brings an extremely odd presidential statement that people seem too focused on the wall as a component of border security: “With so much talk about the Wall, people are losing sight of the great job being done on our Southern Border by Border Patrol, ICE and our great Military. Remember the Caravans? Well, they didn’t get through and none are forming or on their way. Border is tight. Fake News silent!”

Eight days ago, this president sat in the Oval Office arguing with Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi and explicitly and loudly drew a red line over the issue of the border wall. He was not vague, and he did not leave himself wiggle room.

The president was explicit and clear in that televised meeting: without the wall, the border is not really secure.

Now he’s insisting that the “border is tight”?

Everything he said in that meeting was a bluff. Pelosi and Schumer called his bluff. And now Trump has to slink away from the table with a loss and lamely insist that the border wall that was the centerpiece of his campaign wasn’t really needed all along.

I’m not ready to agree with Jim Geraghty’s conclusion in the last paragraph, or at least not yet. Glenn appeared on the money this morning, writing that Trump’s press conference last week made sense “if you figure Trump wants a victory — or even a defeat — on the wall to be a 2020 presidential campaign issue, not a midterm issue.” But today’s messaging is so confusing that it’s impossible to guess what’s really going on with the wall. If Trump is planning on running against the Democratic Congress in 2020, this is no way to get that going.