I think the basic rule in dealing with ransom demands is never pay the ransom since it will only guarantee future hostage taking. This is the what is happening with Trump's capricious decision to close down a large parts of the government in order to please his anti immigrant base. He has taken the Federal Government hostage and is demanding a ransom.
This is not a negotiating tactic. Negotiations are successful attempts to find a solution where both sides have some kind of a win, especially if you are negotiating with a party that you want to or need to continue to work with in the future. Very, very unfortunately, our current president only sees "negotiating" in terms of a "winner" and a "loser" - and his pathological ego cannot allow himself to be seen as the "loser". He is the worst negotiator I have ever seen. When you negotiate you make sure the other side wins as well as yourself because you will be back at the table with them again, and again, and again.
As a reminder, the Senate approved the Continuing Resolution to fund the government with a unanimous voice vote. Trump refused to sign the authorization to fund the government, even though he and his administration had earlier said he would.
He betrayed his word because he was criticized by Ann Coulter and Rush Limabaugh, for goodness sake! These are media personalities whose responsibility is to build and keep an audience. They do so by simplifying their message to get a small segment of the populace - which is a big enough media audience to make them a lot of money.
But he is a president whose responsibility is to govern a complicated country, and he is supposed to do so by juggling complicated needs of that diverse country. He acts like a radio talk show host, not the head of the executive branch of government. He is ever simplifying his message, like a radio talk show host, to attract and keep his audience, which is a relatively small segment of interests in a vastly more complicated country than he is aware of.
Which leads us to the first rule of negotiating - you must be trustworthy. If nobody can trust your promises then you can't be negotiated with. Nobody in their right mind could ever trust anything that our current president says or promises. He just says whatever his current audience wants to hear. So people learn that what this deeply flawed person says is meaningless.
Which leads us to the second rule of negotiating - you must find the decision maker. Who on earth would that be? Rush Limbaugh? Laura Ingraham? Ann Coulter? Sean Hannity? It is certainly not the current president as he has proven that his decisions are made of jelly if he is criticized by the Right Wing Media.
Which leads us to what is really going on here - our current president is not negotiating. Our current president is not governing. Our current president is doing the only thing he knows how to do - campaigning - Building his Brand. And he is campaigning by doing what he thought got him elected in 2016 - by speaking only to and for his base - the hard right wing of the Republican Party.
To bad we don't have an actual president rather than a media personality.
