This week in the saga

This is the week the phone starts ringing the other way. On Wednesday evening the new President of Mexico calls, and afterwards he reports that she has agreed to close the southern border — a foreign government moving for a man who holds no office and will not for another seven weeks. On Saturday the Canadian prime minister flies to Florida for dinner. On Saturday afternoon he tells nine countries at once that any attempt to leave the dollar behind meets a hundred percent tariff, and that they can go and find another sucker. That evening a loyalist who spent the last term chasing the hunt is named to run the bureau that raided his house. In between, at one minute to one on Thanksgiving morning, he wishes a happy holiday to everybody in America including the people who tried to destroy it, which is either the warmest thing he has written all year or the coldest, depending on where you are sitting. And on Monday afternoon he sets a deadline he has no legal power to set: the hostages come home before January 20, or there will be all hell to pay.