Trumpie has a sad

President Donald Trump has become increasingly sensitive to criticism that he's backing off his signature promise to build a wall along the US-Mexico border, three sources familiar with his concern tell CNN, as aides fear the administration's chances for securing funding for it have sunset.

GOP lawmakers and Trump are set to OK a short-term funding measure to avert a year-end government shutdown and Democrats will assume control of the House in 2019, virtually assuring no additional border wall funding.

Trump's anxiety about fulfilling his top campaign goal comes at the end of months of bitter debate inside the West Wing over how to fund the border wall between those seen as ideologues and those who consider themselves pragmatists.

White House officials were in a meeting discussing border security last August when a sudden outburst from aide Stephen Miller silenced the room. The President's legislative affairs director, Shahira Knight, was in the middle of arguing that instead of pushing for the border fight so close to the midterm elections, the White House should hold off until after November when they would be in stronger position to fight over funding.

Miller, the immigration hardliner at the table, cut her off mid-sentence. According to two people in the room, he shot back with a list of reasons why the administration would almost certainly be in a weaker position after the elections because Republicans were guaranteed to lose multiple seats and possibly the entire House, making building the wall all but impossible.
Knight, a former aide to ex-White House economic adviser Gary Cohn with an in-depth policy knowledge, went quiet. An official described it as an "evisceration."
[...]
Trump postponed the summer fight over the border wall when he signed a short-term spending bill in September, but the issue has resurfaced and the same disagreements that were laid bare in that August meeting still exist. The prospect of funding the wall this time around grew dim when Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell announced Wednesday he will introduce a continuing resolution, a deal that will fund the government through February 8 but deny the President his wall funding.

In a radio interview Wednesday, Ann Coulter, a conservative who has criticized the lack progress on the wall, declared she won't vote for Trump in 2020 if the wall isn't built.

"They're about to have a country where no Republican will ever be elected president again," Coulter told the station WMAL. "Trump will just have been a joke presidency who scammed the American people, amused the populists for a while, but he'll have no legacy whatsoever."

It remains to be seen if his supporters will chalk this up as a loss. Trump has continued to pledge he will get his "big, beautiful wall."

Despite aides signaling an impending concession on the border wall, the President outwardly insisted Wednesday that the wall will be built "one way or the other."

"Mexico is paying (indirectly) for the Wall through the new USMCA, the replacement for NAFTA! Far more money coming to the U.S. Because of the tremendous dangers at the Border, including large scale criminal and drug inflow, the United States Military will build the Wall!" he tweeted.

Oct. 3, 2015
“We’re going to build a wall, and it’s going to be impenetrable, it will be a real wall.” —

an. 16, 2016
“China built a wall that’s 13,000 miles long 2,000 years ago. My ambition is for ours to be much higher.” — Speech in Myrtle Beach, S.C. The height of the Great Wall of China averages 20 to 23 feet. Its tallest point is 46 feet.

Feb. 9, 2016
“I’m talking about precasts going up probably 35 to 40 feet up in the air. That’s high. That’s a real wall.” — Interview on MSNBC

Feb. 12, 2016
“The wall just got 10 feet higher.” — Speech in Tampa, Fla., after the former Mexican president said Mexico would not pay for it.

March 3, 2016
“But — and I used an example. And this isn’t necessarily what was said, but whatever was said, the wall’s 50 feet high. Is it going to be 45 feet or 40 feet? That could very well be. That could very well — he wants it to be higher.” — Republican presidential debate

“As horrible as it sounds, when they throw the large sacks of drugs over, and if you have people on the other side of the wall, you don’t see them–they hit you on the head with 60 pounds of the stuff? It's over.”