Could it be the man is learning?

Over the past couple of weeks, the Trump administration vowed to shut down the government on April 28th (when it runs out of funding) if Congress didn’t agree to fund Trump’s ridiculous Mexican border wall. Trump has now backed off on that–promising the wall will still get built, but without holding the budget hostage to get it. At this rate, Trump could just keep promising it’ll happen eventually… until he leaves office.

That doesn’t mean the fight against the wall is over, though. The pound of flesh he may demand for giving in this time is that next time he won’t be so malleable. And he can use existing border security appropriations to start work on the wall–there are some indications that this is already happening.

I can’t say I would’ve felt the least bit bad for Republicans had they gone through with a shutdown, in any case. There is still the matter of getting a budget passed, too, which Republicans can only do with help from Democrats. Trump easing up on the wall might actually be good for Democrats, because it means that whatever they get in exchange for offering their votes to pass a budget, they don’t have to worry that Trump will slam the brakes over his pet project.

It remains to be seen whether we’ll actually have a budget passed this week, however. Just have to wait a few days to find out.