Throughout the weekend, top White House aides including Mulvaney suggested Trump might veto a spending bill that doesn’t fund his border wall. Chief of Staff Reince Priebus told The Post on Sunday that Trump’s insistence on that point remained strong.
Fast forward a little more than 24 hours, and Trump apparently abandoned that demand. With still four days to go in the funding battle, he showed his hard-line stance wasn’t so hard-line, after all. Basically, he had his bluff called — again.
He took what is likely his best chance at getting funding for something he promised to voters dozens upon dozens of times, and he didn’t even bring it close to the finish line to make Democrats sweat. Indeed, the likelihood that Congress is going to agree to fund the wall at a later date seems considerably less than it would be this week. Trump has essentially taken his wall and turned it into a metaphorical wall — substituting increased enforcement — rather than a brick-and-mortar one.
This kind of bluffing and having it called is undoubtedly something Trump is used to in the business and real estate worlds.
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