As Donald Trump wraps up his first 10 weeks in the White House, it is clear that the braggadocio he employed as “the closer” in negotiating real estate deals does not play well as president.

The other two branches of government dealt Trump humiliating setbacks as he tried to fulfill two key campaign promises: restricting Muslim immigration and repealing and replacing Obamacare. Federal judges ruled unconstitutional Trump’s two tries at crafting a travel ban targeting Muslim-majority countries. And the Trump-backed, Republican alternative to the Affordable Care Act failed to muster enough support to even get to a vote last week in the GOP-controlled House.

Trump, who boasted as a candidate that “We’re going to win so much. You’re going to get tired of winning,” instead has two months in office marked by decisive defeats. Trump not only has lost on significant issues of substance, but he has not shown the will or capacity to moderate his bluster, which he must do if he is to be taken seriously as president.

In assessing the failure to repeal former President Barack Obama’s health care law — the Republicans’ top target for the new administration — Trump said, “This was an interesting period of time. We learned a lot about loyalty and we learned a lot about the vote-getting process. I was disappointed because we could have had it. I’m a little surprised.”

But instead of examining his own inability to close the deal, Trump blasted first the Democrats and then the extreme-right members of the House Freedom Caucus for torpedoing the Republican health care overhaul. Early Sunday, Trump tweeted: “Democrats are smiling in D.C. that the Freedom Caucus, with the help of Club for Growth and Heritage, have saved Planned Parenthood & Ocare!”

Club for Growth and Heritage Action are conservative advocacy groups that opposed the Republicans’ American Health Care Act.

Even as staunch a Trump supporter as former House Speaker Newt Gingrich was critical of the doomed effort to win approval of legislation that was favored by only 17 percent of Americans, according to a Quinnipiac University poll completed last week. “Why would you schedule a vote on a bill that is at 17% approval? Have we forgotten everything that Reagan taught us?” Gingrich tweeted Friday afternoon.

And Rick Tyler, a communications consultant who has worked for conservative Republicans, including Gingrich, told the Boston Globe that the health care debacle was “a catastrophic legislative failure. It’s the equivalent of having a cardiac arrest. You can recover from it, but it will take a lot of rehab.

“Political experience is a hard teacher. You get the test first and learn the lesson next.”

Perhaps Trump is learning some lessons about the art of political negotiations. Early in the week, his aides expressed a willingness to work with moderate Democrats on major legislation.

Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer, D-New York, said his party would work with Trump to reform Obamacare if the president stops trying to repeal or undermine it. Schumer added that Trump cannot remain wed only to the interests of conservative Republicans if he hopes to negotiate with Congressional Democrats.

“If he changes, he could have a different presidency,” Schumer said. “But he’s going to have to tell the Freedom Caucus and the hard-right special wealthy interests who are dominating the presidency … he can’t work with them, and we’ll certainly look at his proposals.”

The next big-ticket item on Trump’s legislative agenda is major reform of the tax code, which has not been done since 1986. Specific legislation has not been proposed, but Trump favors lower rates, especially for businesses, and fewer loopholes, as well as a possible tax on imports. “We will probably be going really hard for the big tax cuts and tax reform — that’s next,” Trump said Friday.

If that’s to be the measuring stick, the approval of meaningful reform, including middle-class tax cuts, is badly needed by a president who has floundered in his first 70 days. Trump knows that Americans don’t have limitless patience.

After all, it was he who wrote in, “Trump: The Art of the Deal,” published in 1987, “You can’t con people, at least not for long. You can create excitement, you can do wonderful promotion and get all kinds of press, and you can throw in a little hyperbole. But if you don’t deliver the goods, people will eventually catch on.”

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