Donald Trump Is Worried About His First Hundred Days

I love this tweet:

No matter how much I accomplish during the ridiculous standard of the first 100 days, & it has been a lot (including S.C.), media will kill!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) April 21, 2017

Trump, of course, has accomplished virtually nothing so far. He’s issued a few executive orders that are mostly small beer, and signed a few bills that rescinded some of Obama’s executive orders. That’s it. His health care bill was a fiasco. He hasn’t gotten funding for his wall. His immigration order crashed and burned. He has no tax plan. He has no plan to destroy ISIS.

But there’s a silver lining here. As always, today’s tweet should be read as an alert aimed at his base. He’s telling them that in a few days they’ll see a lot of stories saying he’s accomplished nothing. In fact, less than nothing, since the government might well be headed for a shutdown by the end of next week. But it’s all lies! Clearly he’s concerned about this.

That should give Democrats an opening. Try to strike a budget deal before next week’s deadline. Agree to support some money for Trump’s wall in return for making Obamacare’s CSR appropriation automatic.¹ This would be good for Trump in two ways. First, he gets to say that he’s started building the wall. Second, Obamacare doesn’t collapse on his watch, and agreeing to the CSR appropriation doesn’t do anything to stop him from trying to repeal and replace Obamacare later. It just ensures that it will work in the meantime.

In return, Democrats don’t really get anything. Agreeing to funding for the wall is unpopular with their base, and CSR funding is something that only a few wonks care about. Keeping the CSR money flowing would help insurance companies and it would help actual people, but politically it does nothing much for Democrats.

It’s kind of funny, isn’t it? I assume Trump is unwilling to make this deal. I don’t know why, since it seems almost entirely favorable to him. But he won’t do it. Maybe Democrats wouldn’t do it either. Is the art of the deal really that dead in Congress these days?

¹CSR stands for Cost Sharing and Reduction. It’s money paid to insurance companies to reduce deductibles and copays for low-income families. It’s been the subject of a long-running court fight, and insurers are justifiably worried about whether they’re going to receive the money they’ve been promised.