BORDER/TRUMP AS PRESIDENT/WALL: “President Donald Trump on Friday [2-15-19] signed a deal for far less money than he wanted to start to put up a tiny fraction of a slat-fence variety of the long-promised border wall he says he’s been building but hasn’t. It was clearly a loss. He still called it a win…Trump declaring a national emergency on the Mexican border: a first. Trump painting over inconvenient facts: not at all a first. His whole life, from courtrooms and boardrooms in New York to the suites and the jangling halls of his casinos in New Jersey to his unlikely political ascent and now his two-plus haywire years in the White House, Trump unceasingly has suffered setbacks but nonetheless dubbed them successes. There are people, of course, who see him as little more than a scattershot incompetent, but to settle for that characterization is to miss this vital part of his M.O. It’s one of his most uncommon and undeniable talents—a stubborn and often effective refusal to allow others to define his victories and defeats.”
–Michael Kruse, “Can Trump Spin a Wall From Nothing?,” Politico, February 15, 2019