Trump failing with Congress because he thinks it's like getting new buildings past zoning: WaPo column

On the campaign trail, Donald Trump promised voters that he would be able to work with Congress very well, citing his experience as a developer in New York City.

“I’ll get Congress,” Trump said. “I’ve been getting politicians to pass whatever I wanted all my life. Nobody has more experience — you know, it’s sort of interesting, nobody has more experiences dealing with politicians. I’ve been dealing with them all my life... I mean, I built a city on the West Side of Manhattan. You talk about getting zoning. Getting zoned for Trump Tower: 68 stories on 57th and 5th. Let me tell you, I’ve been dealing with politicians all my life. They’re fine. They’re wonderful. They’re all talk, they’re no action."

Trump's childish naivety on the subject was an epic miscalculation, writes Washington Post columnist Philip Bump, which is why we find our government shutdown with no end in sight.

"Trump at no time was prepared to manage the process of passing legislation through the House and the Senate," Bump writes. "The current government shutdown, approaching three weeks in length, stemmed from dual failures on Trump’s part: Most recently in an inability to cajole members of Congress to see his side on funding for a wall on the border with Mexico and, earlier, a failure to passing a funding mechanism for that wall during the two years when Republicans controlled the House and the Senate."

Trump could not get his own party to push through a wall and did not seem to realize his signature campaign promise stood no chance with Democrats controlling one lever of government, Bump writes.

"Trump will note (and has noted) that the existence of the filibuster makes passing legislation trickier than bare majorities might make it seem," he writes. "And that’s fair — but it also means that Trump at no point was able to use those zoning-board skills to persuade even eight Democrats to join his view of an issue."

The wall fight is "unwinnable for the president," Bump writes because of how important it is to Trump's base. The wall is unpopular with the majority of Americans and a deal-breaker for Trump's most hardcore supporters, meaning Democrats have "even less incentive to side with him than they might otherwise have."

Read the full column here.