What did Donald Trump do today?

He said he was negotiating with Mexico, a claim denied by Mexico's chief negotiator.

Trump has been furious about news reports showing that his "negotiations" with Mexico over his most recent tariff bluff yielded nothing more than what Mexico was already doing. In tweets and in person today, he claimed that he had concluded further secret negotiations with Mexico.

They are so secret, in fact, that Mexico doesn't seem to have heard of them. At a press conference of his own today, Mexican Secretary of Foreign Affairs Marcelo Ebrard flatly contradicted Trump's early morning tweets. 

Trump has also claimed recently (and in all capital letters) that Mexico had made unspecified agreements to buy more U.S. farm products. Ebrard also said today that this wasn't true:

As the tariffs aren’t imposed, he [Trump] would be calculating, I suppose, there would be a boost to economic growth and that that will increase our imports, including grains. That’s what I think he’s saying. But we don’t have a specific agreement on agricultural products. 

How is this a bad thing?

• There's no such thing as a deal with a country that's saying there's no deal.

• It's wrong to say you've accomplished something when you haven't.

• It's bad if other countries find it necessary to call the President of the United States a liar in public.