Trump's erratic behavior on border policy is reportedly based in existential political dread

President Trump's "increasingly erratic behavior" on immigration policy began with a March 29 tweet in which he threatened to close the U.S. Mexico border, The Washington Post reports, and his words and actions since then have "alarmed top Republicans, business officials, and foreign leaders who fear that his emotional response might exacerbate problems at the border, harm the U.S. economy, and degrade national security."

Trump's March 29 tweet from Mar-a-Lago was followed by his announcement that he had ordered aid cut to Honduras, El Salvador, and Guatemala, and an April 1 phone call to Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen in London, in which a "livid" Trump berated Nielsen for being oversees during a border crisis, the Post reports. Trump was "showing signs of panic as border crossings spiked to the highest levels in more than a decade," and Nielsen cut short her trip to a cyberterrorism and cybersecurity summit in Europe to "furiously" fight for her job in Washington.

It was a doomed effort. Dissuaded from closing the border, Trump "turned his ire on his senior DHS leadership team," pushing out Nielsen and other officials, the Post says. These two weeks of volatility have "revealed that a president who has routinely blamed spiking immigration numbers on others — past presidents, congressional Democrats, Mexican authorities, federal judges, human smugglers — is now coming to the realization that the problems are closer to home. Though his aides have taken the fall, and it is unlikely that Trump will blame himself, the president is facing an existential political crisis ahead of his 2020 re-election bid over the prospect of failure on his top domestic priority."

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Curbing immigration is a "defining issue" for Trump now and in his 2020 campaign, Mark Krikorian, a leading immigration restrictionist, told the Post. "He needs to be seen by voters as having done every conceivable thing he can possibly do." You can read more about Trump's 12 days of border chaos at The Washington Post.