Here’s the thing about Donald Trump’s “major announcement” today

| 6:25 am EST January 19, 2019
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Last night Donald Trump tweeted that he’ll be making a “major announcement” at 3pm eastern time today with regard to his disastrous government shutdown and border wall fantasy. This has set off quite a bit of concern among the public about just what Trump might announce, as he’s cornered and angry and losing, and of course mentally unstable. But here’s the thing.

Barely a week ago, Donald Trump announced that he’d be giving a prime time television address about the shutdown and the wall. This also led to widespread concern about what he might end up saying or doing. Television pundits raced in to insist that Trump would declare a national emergency and use it to magically make his wall happen, even though nothing works that way. Sure enough, Trump’s speech ended up being of no consequence. Then Trump went to the border two days later and held a press conference, which also ended up being of no consequence.

I see a pattern here. This is not a guy who is trying to raise the stakes. This is a guy who merely wants to keep scaring us into believing he’s going to raise the stakes. Trump can’t make his wall happen through a state of emergency declaration any more than he can make it happen by announcing that unicorns have volunteered to build it. Yet Trump keeps managing to scare large chunks of the nation into paralysis simply by creating the illusion that he’s about to make a bold announcement that’ll magically give him absolute power, even though – again – nothing works that way.

That’s not to say there’s zero chance Donald Trump will announce anything of consequence today. Sure, he could blow his stack and try to declare a national emergency. But if he does, it’ll quickly get shut down by the courts, and then he’ll have lost the one thing that a bluffer has: the illusion that he’s holding any cards. The shutdown continues to have negative real-world consequences for Americans across the board. But don’t look for Trump to try to raise the stakes today. He’s more likely to simply kick the can down the road, and hope he can bluff us again next week, because that’s what he does. We’ll find out soon enough.