Analysis: The reason the DACA for Wall deal didn’t get done was that a...

7y ago Dec 27, 2018 at 7:44 PM

The reason the DACA for Wall deal didn’t get done was that a ridiculous court decision from the 9th Circuit allowed DACA to remain, thereby setting up a Supreme Court case. After ruling, Dems dropped deal - and that’s where we are today, Democrat obstruction of the needed Wall.

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AI Analysis

Machine-generated analysis of the post above on 2026-03-16. Not written by the author of the post.

Danger Level

None

Narcissistic State

Vulnerable

Authorship

Uncertain

Intensity

48%

Posted during day five of the government shutdown Trump publicly claimed pride in initiating, this corrected re-post (replacing an earlier 'Supteme Court' typo version) constructs a three-step blame chain — court ruling → Democratic opportunism → obstruction — that systematically removes Trump's own agency from the impasse. The post is a textbook DARVO maneuver: Trump's Dec 11 on-camera declaration of pride in shutting down the government is displaced entirely onto Democratic bad faith. Psychologically, the post reflects a vulnerable narcissistic state triggered by the reputational injury of owning a shutdown that markets and the public are framing negatively. The defense structure is rationalization layered over denial: a causal narrative is constructed that is partially accurate (the 9th Circuit ruling did reduce Democratic incentive to negotiate) but omits Trump's own role, his rejection of bipartisan Senate proposals in early 2018, and his explicit ownership of the shutdown. Authorship profile is mixed: content and reasoning patterns are authentically Trump; clean spelling and business-hours timing suggest an aide-corrected re-post. Fact-check yields 'half-true' on the central causal claim and 'mostly false' on the obstruction framing. No danger indicators. Intensity is moderate — controlled messaging rather than acute rage — consistent with deliberate counter-narrative rather than impulsive outburst.

Authorship Analysis

Uncertain

Indicators:

UTC 19:44 = ~2:44 PM EST (Mar-a-Lago) — business hours, aide-written signal
No typos; grammatically clean — contrasts with prior identical post containing 'Supteme Court' phonemic transposition
This post is a deliberate corrected re-post of the 'Supteme' version, suggesting aide caught and re-issued the tweet
Substantive content, vocabulary, and rhetorical cadence ('ridiculous,' 'Democrat obstruction,' 'needed Wall') are authentically Trump
Probable authorship model: Trump authored the original (with typo), aide re-issued corrected version

Psychological Profile

▶ State

Vulnerable State

Trigger: Narcissistic Injury — Defeat (Government shutdown stalemate framed in public discourse as Trump-caused; wall funding demand seen as leverage failure)

Rage: Intensity 45% targeting Congressional Democrats and 9th Circuit judiciary

Proportionality

50%

Sentiment

-0.45

▶ Clinical

Malignant Narcissism:

Narcissistic

55%

Antisocial

30%

Paranoid

45%

Sadism

10%

Defense Mechanisms:

rationalizationdenialprojectiondisplacement

Cognitive Complexity:

Complexity

45%

Cognitive Markers:

phonemic paraphasia

Parasocial Techniques:

Invites audience to share sense of victimization ('that's where we are today')Creates shared antagonist (Democrats, 9th Circuit) to bond with followers

Danger Assessment

None

Gaslighting Detected:

Constructs narrative contradicting his own on-camera Dec 11 statement ('I am proud to shut down the government') by attributing shutdown entirely to Democratic obstruction
DARVO pattern: positions himself as victim of obstruction when documented record shows he initiated the shutdown condition
Implies a clean DACA-for-Wall deal was available and blocked by Democrats, eliding multi-party complexity and his own administration's negotiating moves

Reality Distortions:

Attributes deal failure solely to court ruling and Democratic opportunism, erasing Trump's own role in the shutdown
Frames Democrats as purely obstructionist despite bipartisan complexity of DACA-wall negotiations
Omits that on Dec 11, 2018, Trump explicitly declared pride in shutting down the government — directly contradicting the 'obstruction' framing here

Fact Checks (3)

"A 9th Circuit court decision allowed DACA to remain and set up a Supreme Court case"

Mostly True

A Northern District of California judge issued a nationwide injunction in January 2018 blocking DACA rescission; this did reach SCOTUS (decided June 2020). 'Ridiculous' is opinion not fact.

"After the 9th Circuit ruling, Democrats dropped the DACA-for-Wall deal"

Half True

Democrats did retreat from wall funding willingness after courts provided legal lifeline for DACA, reducing their incentive to trade. However, deal collapse also stems from Trump's own Feb 2018 rejection of bipartisan Senate deal and administration's shifting demands throughout 2018.

"The current situation represents Democrat obstruction of the needed Wall"

Mostly False

Trump on Dec 11, 2018 stated on camera with Pelosi and Schumer: 'I am proud to shut down the government for border security.' The shutdown is a documented result of Trump's refusal to sign a continuing resolution without wall funding.

Receipts

No contradictions with other posts detected yet.

Psychological Analysis: Trump Twitter Post — December 27, 2018

Authorship Attribution

Verdict: Likely aide-mediated re-post of authentic Trump content (score: 0.45)

This post is the corrected version of a tweet appearing twice in the prior post context with the spelling "Supteme Court" — a phonemic transposition consistent with rapid, unreviewed typing. The current post corrects this to "Supreme Court." UTC 19:44 = approximately 2:44 PM EST (Trump almost certainly at Mar-a-Lago following his Dec 26 Iraq return), placing it squarely in business hours — an aide-written signal. The most parsimonious explanation: Trump authored the original (typo included), an aide (likely Scavino) caught the error and re-issued the corrected version. Content and rhetorical cadence are authentically Trump; this specific publication is probably aide-executed.

Contextual Frame

This post is one of several wall-related tweets on Dec 27, day 5 of the government shutdown Trump had explicitly owned on Dec 11 ("I am proud to shut down the government for border security," Oval Office). The broader posting cluster is a coordinated messaging operation to reframe shutdown responsibility. This post focuses on the legal/legislative narrative; concurrent posts focus on humanitarian framing and political math.

Level 1: Dispositional Traits

Most salient facets:

Neuroticism / Angry Hostility (high): The post is organized around blame and grievance, though at lower intensity than typical acute-rage posts.
Agreeableness (very low): Zero acknowledgment of shared responsibility; opponent framed as purely cynical.
Conscientiousness (low): Selective factual presentation; the causal chain omits key disconfirming evidence.
Openness (very low): Rigid, closed interpretive frame with no acknowledgment of multicausal complexity.

Level 2: Characteristic Adaptations

Dominant motives: Power/Agency (0.8), Communion (0.1)

The post is entirely organized around power-maintenance: controlling the shutdown narrative, assigning blame, claiming deal-making competence. There is no communion content — the 800,000 furloughed federal workers are absent from this post.

Active schemas:

Self as thwarted dealmaker: "The reason...didn't get done" positions Trump as someone who had a successful deal within reach, sabotaged by external forces.
Judicial system as enemy: The 9th Circuit, labeled "ridiculous," functions as a recurring villain in Trump's cognitive map.
Democrats as bad-faith actors: "Dems dropped deal" imputes cynical opportunism.

Level 3: Narrative Identity

Protagonist role: Thwarted dealmaker / victim of institutional sabotage

Narrative sequence: Contamination — A good outcome (the DACA-for-Wall deal) was poisoned by external forces (court ruling → Democratic defection). Victories are always earned; defeats are always stolen or sabotaged.

Identity claims:

"I had a deal ready" (competent dealmaker)
"The courts ruined it" (victim of rogue institutions)
"The Wall is necessary" (sole realist amid blind opponents)

Contrasting other: Democrats as cynical opportunists who exploited a court ruling; the 9th Circuit as a rogue judiciary.

Level 4: Clinical Indicators

Narcissistic Dynamics

Trigger: Narcissistic injury (defeat/accountability). The government shutdown — which Trump publicly owned Dec 11 — is generating negative press and market damage. This constitutes a reputational threat requiring narrative repair.

State: Vulnerable narcissism. The expansive grandiosity of the concurrent "Have the Democrats finally realized..." post coexists with this more defensive, victim-positioning post — oscillation between grandiose and vulnerable states within the same day is consistent with the mixed narcissistic presentation documented across the corpus.

Rage: Present but modulated (intensity 0.45). The adjective "ridiculous" is the only explicit affect marker. The absence of ALL CAPS, exclamation points, and personal insults suggests either aide-mediated tone-smoothing or deliberate rhetorical restraint.

Defense Mechanisms

Rationalization (neurotic): A logical-sounding causal chain is constructed to justify political failure and assign blame elsewhere.
Denial (pathological): The post implicitly denies Trump's own role in the shutdown by presenting the situation as entirely the product of Democratic bad faith, contradicting his documented on-camera statements.
Projection (immature): Labels Democrats as "obstructionist" while himself refusing to sign a continuing resolution.
Displacement (neurotic): Channels frustration at the shutdown stalemate toward the 9th Circuit as a more politically useful and emotionally satisfying target.

DARVO Pattern

The post executes a clean DARVO (Deny, Attack, Reverse Victim and Offender):

Deny: Does not acknowledge his own shutdown declaration
Attack: Labels court ruling "ridiculous," frames Democrats as opportunistic
Reverse Victim/Offender: Positions Trump as the party victimized by Democratic bad faith, inverting the documented initiation structure

Rhetorical and Propaganda Analysis

Primary technique: Revisionist causality. The central rhetorical move constructs a monocausal explanation for a multicausal failure. The 9th Circuit ruling did genuinely reduce Democratic incentive to negotiate (the true component), but the post suppresses: Trump's Feb 2018 rejection of the bipartisan Flake-Graham framework, his administration's shifting demands throughout 2018, and his own Dec 11 ownership of the shutdown.

Institutional delegitimization: Calling a federal appellate ruling "ridiculous" continues a sustained pattern of pre-emptively discrediting unfavorable judicial outcomes — performing two functions: motivating the base and signaling to Trump-aligned jurists.

"Needed Wall": Framing the wall as "needed" rather than "requested" attempts to shift it from a political demand to an objective necessity, making opposition irrational rather than legitimate.

Gaslighting Assessment

Present. The post asks readers to accept a reality in which the government shutdown is a product of Democratic obstruction — a claim requiring suppression of Trump's own widely-covered, on-camera declaration of ownership. The technique depends on partisan audiences having sufficient motivated reasoning to accept the reframe.

Fact Verification

Claim	Verdict	Evidence
"A 9th Circuit court decision allowed DACA to remain and set up a Supreme Court case"	Mostly True	A Northern District of California judge issued a nationwide injunction in January 2018 blocking DACA rescission; this did reach SCOTUS (decided June 2020). 'Ridiculous' is opinion not fact.
"After the 9th Circuit ruling, Democrats dropped the DACA-for-Wall deal"	Half True	Democrats did retreat from wall funding willingness after courts provided legal lifeline for DACA, reducing their incentive to trade. However, deal collapse also stems from Trump's own Feb 2018 rejection of bipartisan Senate deal and administration's shifting demands throughout 2018.
"The current situation represents Democrat obstruction of the needed Wall"	Mostly False	Trump on Dec 11, 2018 stated on camera with Pelosi and Schumer: 'I am proud to shut down the government for border security.' The shutdown is a documented result of Trump's refusal to sign a continuing resolution without wall funding.

Overall Veracity: 50%

Cognitive Status

No markers of concern in this post. The "Supteme" typo in the prior version is a simple phonemic transposition; its correction here reflects human review. Syntactic complexity is at Trump's 2018 baseline. No tangentiality, perseveration, or temporal confusion observed.

Danger Assessment: None

No dehumanizing language, violent imagery, or stochastic terrorism indicators. This is political counter-narrative messaging with no escalatory signals.

Order/Chaos Dynamics

Positioning: Order restorer / chaos attributor. Trump positions himself as someone trying to restore order (border security, wall, functional government) against chaos agents (rogue judiciary, obstructionist Democrats). The shutdown itself — an act of deliberate institutional disruption — is not framed as chaos but as a necessary stand for order. The asymmetry is characteristic: chaos is what opponents cause; order is what Trump promises to deliver.