1. President Trump cannot make deals with the Democrat leadership on their own. There isn't a single bill in Congress that is ever going to get out of committee without the approval of the majority party.
2. Trump's complaints about the filibuster are clearly not serious. The filibuster is irrelevant if the GOP can't even get a simple majority on any consequential legislation.
If we accept that this is all just noise and distraction, the only question is: What is going on behind the scenes?
1. If Ryan and McConnell start bottling up legislation that Trump wants passed in committee, Trump will burn the entire party to the ground, and we will see Democratic majorities for the next 20 years. This is always the danger of President Trump. He has nearly carte blanche permission to do whatever he wants with 35 percent of the electorate. He can’t win an election with that. But he can sure as hell make sure that the Republicans never win anything again with that. Ryan and McConnell are not going to resist him to that point.
2. I think Trump is 100 percent serious about the filibuster. I don’t think he gives a damn about Senate traditions or what this might mean under President Harris in 4 or 8 years. He wants stuff passed. And I think his calculus is that a Manchin and Heitkamp might go along with him without the filibuster. Which, honestly, is not a crazy idea. There is little danger for a Dem in voting against cloture on any bill. That’s too hard to put in an ad. It’s another to have a vote on the record on a real bill.
According to some, the abject surrender of the Trump administration. To bad the power of the knee jerk can’t be harnessed.