Mexico jaunt exposes Trump's secret: He's weak

There's been a couple of things that have been bothering me in the wake of Donald Trump's wild Wednesday that included his south-of-the-border jaunt to meet Mexico's president (answering a question on the mind of many American voters: Who is the president of Mexico?) -- and then his softening-to-hardening immigration rant in Phoenix.

Much of the attention focused on Trump's unrelentingly hostile speech before a frightening, cheering mob of Arizona admirers -- in which he declared "there will be no amnesty" for millions of immigrants who've been working and raising children in America, and that as many as 2 million people could be rounded up in a mass deportation drive in the early months of a Trump administration.

In Trumpworld, "immigrant' and "criminal" are synonymous. The candidate proclaimed -- with no facts to back it up -- that immigrants are responsible for the deaths of "countless Americans." He topped that by boasting, to thunderous applause, that he would indeed get Mexico to pay for "a great wall" on the southern border -- just hours after Mexico's Enrique Pena Nieto made clear there's no way in hell this will happen.

Maybe he meant he was going to open a Great Wall Chinese restaurant in Tucson.

If you missed Trump's Phoenix speech, you can get a pretty good sense of it from the reaction. The former KKK Grand Wizard David Duke called it an "excellent speech" on Twitter, noting that it put "America First," echoing the motto of those who once opposed fighting Hitler, while white nationalist Richard B. Spencer declared that "#Trump is back in a big way!" Meanwhile, several key members of Trump's Hispanic advisory board quit in disgust. One said, bitterly, "He used us as props."

The idea of an alleged immigration policy masking a wholesale human-right violation is nothing new, though. More than a year after launching his bid for the White House, Trump is still more interested in shoring up his support with angry white men than expanding his reach. Same as it ever was.

What did trouble me about Wednesday's events? For one thing, the media coverage was mostly horrendous. If I had a dollar for every time some TV pundit  insisted that Trump was finally looking "presidential" -- right before his latest Leni Riefenstahl production in the desert -- I could at least buy a caseload of Trump Steaks, maybe some Trump Vodka. The New York Times also bent over backwards with a story that not only hailed Trump's "audacious" makeover (that wasn't) but also, in its initial version, falsely claimed he's shelved his deportation plan,

But what really seemed off based here was the suggestion that Trump ever looked "presidential" in the first place. I watched his joint news conference with Pena Nieto, known as "EPN." Trump stood awkwardly at his podium, looking impatient and out of sorts while the Mexican president spoke, then describing the meeting as if he'd just been pinged with a tranquilizer dart.

Only when Trump and Pena Nieto took some questions from reporters (a nice touch...you should really try it sometime, Hillary) did the $64 billion (or whatever) question about the border wall even come up. "We didn't discuss that," Trump said in an uncharacteristic mutter. That was a lie. The Mexican president said later that he'd made it very clear to Trump that his nation would never pay for a U.S. border wall. Maybe Trump was paying an homage to his former pal Bill Clinton, that it all depends on what your definition of the word "discussed" is.

Looking presidential doesn't usually involve telling a bald-faced fib in front of the foreign leader you've just done business with. But Trump didn't really look presidential -- he looked like a sulking and somewhat frightened big dog. He clearly knew that he was in over his head conducting international diplomacy. That's not what the former reality-TV show star signed up for, anyway -- not when he could spellbind his nightly mass meeting of the faithful and score big Nielsen ratings.

The daylight of Mexico City revealed the secret that Trump has been trying so hard to keep from the American people. That he's a weakling, a lightweight, who doesn't even know "the art of the deal" anymore, just how to file lawsuits against  all of the interested parties when it all, inevitably, goes south (no pun intended).

Trump didn't look presidential at all, but he did provide us an alarming insight into what an actual Trump presidency would look like. It would be a matter of days before it would become clear that all of Trump's vague campaign-trail boasts -- from getting Mexico to pay for the wall to standing up to China on trade to creating jobs in the black community (how?) -- are not-thought-out, unattainable pipe dreams.

And when the petulant child doesn't get his way, he will behave like he did last night, and rant and rave and make even more ridiculous promises and tell even bigger lies. Except the only difference after January is that there'll be a guy standing next to him with the nuclear football, and that Trump could pick up his phone and, instead of tweeting a few choice insults, order a drone strike.

There's no pivot. There's no softening. There's no new Trump -- just the bluster of someone who's a bully when he gets pumped up by the mob, but who becomes a whimpering, stoop-shouldered dishonest fool when face-to-face with his self-proclaimed adversary. The only good news that came out of Trump's crazy day is that it's more clear than ever that he doesn't even want to be our president, just to bask in the applause of the unreality show we saw in Phoenix in prime time.