"That deal, a fraction of the funds Donald Trump was looking for to build his border wall -- even less wall funding than he was offered before he took the federal government hostage for 35 days in the longest government shutdown in our nation's history," host Nicolle Wallace noted.
"The new deal reached last night -- just as Trump was about to take the stage in El Paso -- represents a Texas-sized loss for the president," she explained. "Despite his best efforts to put the weight of his presidency behind his signature campaign promise, at the end of the day, Donald Trump [is] losing on substance and on tactics."
"Republicans in Congress unwilling to put the country through another shutdown over Trump's base-pleaser," she continued. "Donald Trump made clear today he's got a bad case of the border wall blues."
NBC News national political reporter Heidi Przybyla joined Wallace for analysis.
"You heard the president himself say he's not happy, dismissing the deal but saying we're supplementing and then also today you saw Majority Leader Mitch McConnell in the Senate say he would be okay if the president did something like that," Przybyla noted.
"And this, for the president, is the safest political move to make," she continued. "Why? Because as you saw at his rally, he's already misleading people about the status of the wall, saying it's already built. And so now we're just going to shift these funds -- you know, 'Congress wouldn't comply with me, so I, Donald Trump, am going to step in and shift these funds and build the big, beautiful wall' and that is how he'll sell it."
The question of a shutdown may all come down to Sean Hannity -- just as the last one started because Trump was criticized by Ann Coulter and Rush Limbaugh.
Coulter has already branded Trump a coward.
"The question, the only question at this hour, is will Sean Hannity also buy into it," Przybyla suggest. "He's already lost Ann Coulter, but I imagine that there will be some consultations going on between the president and Sean Hannity and at some point he will buy in, too, and declare this a victory."
The host played a clip of Hannity's initial views on the matter, calling it a "garbage compromise."
"By the way, on this new so-called compromise, I'm getting details $1.3 billion? That's not a -- not even a wall, a barrier. I'm going to tell this tonight and we'll get back into this tomorrow, any Republican that supports this garbage compromise, you'll have to explain," Hannity threatened.
"The president on line three -- 'Sean, please don't call it a garbage compromise, It's all I could do, Sean, please,'" Wallace impersonated.
"I don't have words for how ridiculous that was," Wallace added.
"At the same time, Hannity is correct about the politics here, which is the Democrats functionally demolished Trump on this border wall question," Przybyla noted.
"You know you're in trouble politically when Sean Hannity isn't attacking me and he isn't attacking the press and he isn't attacking the Democrats, but the Republicans. I mean, this is the bottom of the political barrel for the Trump caucus," explained Wallace, a former White House communications director in the George W. Bush administration.
"I have a prediction by the time 9:00 tonight rolls around, Sean Hannity is going to fold like a cheap suit, he's going to have gotten the message," former DOJ spokesman Matt Miller predicted. "It's pretty clear this train is leaving the station, Sean Hannity is going to get on board -- he's not going to leave Donald Trump out there hanging by himself."
Watch:
