One of the purposes of creating a government is to bring order to chaos. Other purposes include those spelled out in the Constitution and Declaration of Independence, including the protection of our "unalienable rights."
But Donald Trump does not want to bring order to chaos. His raison d'être is bringing chaos to order. Trump lives for chaos. He thrives in it. And creating it is how he advances his agenda both politically and personally.
As an Agent of Chaos, Trump is free to wreak havoc on the delicate workings of legislative compromises. This, he is gleefully doing on the emerging border security deal.
Trump's objections to the deal have nothing to do with its merits. His objections are politically strategic. Trump doesn't want a border deal because it would at least partially remove a major issue he plans on using to destroy Biden in the November election.
There's a crisis at the border. Everyone now agrees on that, even though Biden pretended otherwise for most of the last year.
“I think the border is a very important issue for Donald Trump. And the fact that he would communicate to Republican senators and congresspeople that he doesn’t want us to solve the border problem because he wants to blame Biden for it is … really appalling,” said GOP Sen. Mitt Romney of Utah, who has been an outspoken critic of Trump.
He added, “But the reality is that we have a crisis at the border; the American people are suffering as a result of what’s happening at the border. And someone running for president not to try and get the problem solved, as opposed to saying, ‘Hey, save that problem. Don’t solve it. Let me take credit for solving it later.’”
Trump is gambling that his opposition to any deal on border security won't hurt him in the general election when the Democrats try to pull a switcheroo and blame Trump when the number of border crossers remains high.
Biden has the entire national media ready to echo his charges that Trump prevented the crisis from being addressed by his opposition to a reasonable compromise. It won't resonate with many Republicans, but Trump might lose support among some independents and fence-sitters. In a close election, that's a big gamble to take.
“I would encourage (chief Senate GOP negotiator) James Lankford and other conservatives to produce a work product with which they will shortly allow conservatives like myself to review it and take heart that there are a number of us who won’t be looking to third parties and assessing the propriety of passing this bipartisan proposal,” Senator Todd Young said. He believes that messing with a bipartisan deal on the border would be"tragic" and added, “I hope no one is trying to take this away for campaign purposes.”
It’s an all-too-familiar dynamic for the Republicans who served while Trump was in office, where he could easily derail legislative action on Capitol Hill with the blast of a single tweet or stir up a new controversy that Republicans were forced to respond to. And with Trump now marching toward the presidential nomination, Republicans are once again bracing for life with him as the nominee.
Underscoring just how damaging Trump’s comments and campaign to kill the border deal have been in the Senate, one GOP senator on condition of background told CNN that without Trump, this deal would have had overwhelming support within the conference.
“This proposal would have had almost unanimous Republican support if it weren’t for Donald Trump,” the Republican senator said.
There are elements in this deal that Republicans have been clamoring to have passed for 40 years. Huge changes to asylum rules that will drastically reduce the number of asylum seekers allowed into the United States, a big reduction in Biden's power to grant immigration "parole" to large numbers of people, and enhancements to electronic and physical barriers at the border would have made this border deal a Republican triumph.
It's been described as a "once in a generation" conservative border bill. Biden is reeling in the polls and is so desperate to get a border deal and subsequent funding for Ukraine that he's angering his left-wing base on immigration by giving the GOP 75% of what they want.
It would have been a triumph for the right.
But it wouldn't have been Donald Trump's triumph. So there you have it. Perfect is the enemy of the good. But for Trump, even a perfect deal wouldn't have passed muster.
