Between the lines: Trump never gravitates towards complexity. And the reprogramming of funds to allow more wall spending, without declaring an emergency, would have been complicated to explain to voters…

Trump makes big decisions substantially through the lens of: “What can I sell to my people?”

Trump consistently thinks in terms of public relations: When people ask him what he achieved during the shutdown, he says he got the nation to focus on the border — and the media to talk about nothing but the border for a month.