But on Friday, Pelosi managed to pull off what some are calling the first undeniable legislative blow to the Trump presidency. She secured an end to the government shutdown without giving Trump the one thing he wanted in exchange—funding for the wall at the US-Mexico border—and did so just days after informing Trump that he would not be permitted to deliver the State of the Union address in the House chamber until the government was open again. [...]
Pelosi has proved what many didn’t believe about Trump: that he is subject to the normal laws of political gravity, and that for all his bluster, he is no more capable of sustaining an unsustainable position than any other politician.
While this isn’t an entirely new insight, Pelosi’s coup of ending the shutdown has shown that the loyalty of Trump’s base has its limits. While pundits have hypothesized the president may hope to use the wall as a cudgel and rallying cry in the 2020 election, the president’s ardent supporters are signaling that they want a wall, and they want it this term.
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