He would risk alienating base voters who prize his strongman image on one issue above all — immigration — and are more inclined to believe that people who cross the border illegally get what they deserve than to react with compassion to reports by media outlets they disdain.

Among those reports Monday came one of the most haunting moments to come thus far in the immigration debate with the release of ProPublica audio recorded last week inside a US Customs and Border Protection detention facility, where children separated from their parents can be heard sobbing. At one point, a traumatized child can be heard calling for “Daddy.”

Whether that could sway the President must be weighed against the certainty that a reversal would dilute the Trump mythology that underwrote his rise as a political figure. Giving in to criticism from all the living first ladies, or the United Nations, or Washington Republicans like Arizona’s Sen. John McCain, would mean bending to the kind of internationalist, traditional establishment forces his entire political project was built to destroy.