In a big victory for those who say he has no idea what he is doing, Donald Trump made a dramatic reversal of his dramatic reversal on deportations. He is again telling ICE to make raids on farms and restaurants and deport undocumented workers. 

This is a remarkable reversal of a remarkable reversal. It was just last Thursday that Trump tweeted that deporting immigrants in these sectors, where they compose a very large share of the workforce, was a serious mistake. 

“Our great Farmers and people in the Hotel and Leisure business have been stating that our very aggressive policy on immigration is taking very good, long time workers away from them, with those jobs being almost impossible to replace.”

The word back then was that ICE should instead focus on deporting criminals.

But that was waaaaay back last week. Now we have a complete reversal again, with Trump ordering ICE to go ahead and deport the workers who Trump had just said were essential to major sectors of the US economy.

Note that these 180-degree flips are not about some obscure provision of the tax code — they are about Donald Trump’s signature policy. At his nominating convention all the delegates were waving “mass deportation” signs that had been printed up in bulk. 

The reversal last week of a reckless policy, that in addition to being incredibly inhumane would cause enormous damage to the US economy, seemed like a concession to reality. Now, just five days later we are back in MAGA land, where Trump is deporting everyone in sight.

I know there are some folks who say Trump is a brilliant strategist who carefully calculates all his moves, but that story is pretty hard to reconcile with the evidence in front of our face. Trump is a 79-year-old man experiencing serious mental decline who has no idea what he is doing. And for now, proponents of democracy are losing to him.