I would sincerely love to be a fly on the wall at tonight's summit meeting between President Donald Trump and the House Republicans. By the time you read this, the meeting will likely either be underway or already over, so it remains to be seen how much of what goes on will leak out. Indeed, one hopes for a surreptitious recording to be made public, but one doesn't always get what one hopes for (alas!). But no matter how many of the details leak, I'd be willing to bet that the meeting will be described as "a spirited discussion" by someone in attendance. The phrase will likely become unavoidable, really.

Trump is, once again, living in his own fantasy world. The Republicans are about to explain political reality to him. This likely won't go over very well, since Trump trusts his own instincts above all, and his instincts so far are to continue to redouble his efforts rather than change course in any way. But then again he doesn't have to worry about getting re-elected in four and a half months -- while everyone else in the meeting does.

The "zero tolerance" policy that Jeff Sessions announced -- and that Trump could change at any time he chooses -- is not playing too well in Peoria, to put it mildly. The firestorm surrounding the policy of separating children (down to toddler age) from their parents is raging, and it shows no signs of abating any time soon. It's a wonder that I haven't yet heard a right-wing conspiracy about how Donald Trump is secretly a Democrat, since he really would have had to try pretty hard to come up with an issue that would be more likely to motivate Democratic voters in the midterms. Trump is making life very hard for Republican candidates right now, and the House members (who all have to get elected every two years) are about to explain this fact to him. Or try to, at any rate.

This time around, for whatever reason, Trump's lies are not working as designed. He obviously had a master plan to cause pain and suffering and then blame it all on the Democrats, but at this point even members of his own party aren't buying what Trump is selling. "The Democrats made me do it!" is so patently false and indeed downright laughable that the Republicans in Congress know the only way out of this mess is to quickly pass some sort of law overturning Trump's chosen child separation policy, in an attempt to save their own political skins.

The Senate, so far, is taking the lead on the issue. They still haven't settled on a single plan yet, although two have now been proposed (one by Ted Cruz of Texas, which shows how badly the anti-immigrant moves by Trump have gotten -- if even a Republican in Texas is against them). Whichever plan they finally settle upon will be simple: allow the children to be locked up with their parents. This way Trump still gets to have his zero tolerance policy, but the media images of frightened and traumatized children being warehoused in cages like stray dogs will hopefully cease (they may be replaced by media images of frightened and traumatized families in cages, but whatever...). That's as far as Republicans are willing to go -- don't fix the real problem, but for Pete's sake please stop with the videos and audiotapes of wailing children!

If even Mitch McConnell (who never met a problem he didn't consider too large for inaction by the Senate) is now on board with at least partially defying Trump, then you know the president has gone too far. Some Senate Republicans are evenly openly admitting that Trump himself could fix this problem "in five minutes," which shows more than anything else that Trump's "Democrats made me do it!" spin attempt has utterly failed. If members of your own party won't join you in bashing the opposition because what you're saying just isn't true, then maybe you'd better change your tune a bit.

The House, so far, hasn't proposed a standalone bill, because they're still trapped in a political calendar of their own making. If this legislative logjam goes nowhere this week, however, look for House Republicans to start making narrow proposals to end the child separation policy as well.

Tonight's meeting between Trump and the House GOP caucus was supposed to go differently. It was supposed to be a pep rally for getting an immigration reform bill through the House. Earlier, Paul Ryan successfully fended off a rebellious attempt by some of his own members who were pushing for a vote on an actual bipartisan bill. Ryan instead scheduled two votes for later in the week, on a hardline Tea Party bill and on a so-called "moderate compromise" bill (which is neither, as I explained yesterday). Trump coming up to Capitol Hill to see them was supposed to rally them all around voting for at least one of the bills, so they could then pass it and immediately begin using it as a political bludgeon during the midterm campaign season (since nobody is expecting the Senate to pass the same bill any time soon). In other words, the meeting was to plan a cynical political election-year strategy designed to give the false impression that Republicans cared more about the DREAMers than Democrats. That was the plan, at any rate.

This was all mapped out before the child separation issue moved into the center ring of American politics, though. The ground has now radically shifted under the House Republicans' well-laid plan. Trump is the only one who, so far, hasn't really grasped this. House Republicans from Ryan on down realized days ago that the optics of the issue were so bad and so heavily skewed against Trump's position that they had to do something about it. So they hastily added a section to their "moderate" bill to end the child separation policy. They were even inferring today that they might add this same provision to the hardliner bill as well, showing how Republicans pretty much across the GOP spectrum now know that Trump's position is simply politically untenable.

Tonight's meeting will be an indicator of how Trump is going to react next. One assumes that House member after GOP House member will explain to Trump that if the child separation policy continues, complete with ever-more-lurid daily media reports (each one straining to show the American public the misery that is happening in their name), then Republican candidates are going to be doomed in November. These political facts of life are quite likely to be just about the only agenda item tonight for Republicans who will have the chance to tell Trump straight to his face what the midterm landscape actually looks like. Trump, up until now, seems to think he's actually improving the re-election chances of Republicans with his new policy, so it'll be interesting to see how he reacts to the news that the opposite is happening.

Trump's got an out, of course. Once the backlash started growing, even Trump admitted how horrific the situation was. Trump then tried to dump all the blame on Democrats, which went over like a lead balloon. But Trump said last Friday that he'd be OK with Congress changing the law so that children wouldn't be removed from their parents, meaning he could now easily support whatever bill the Republicans in the House and Senate finally agree to. Trump's original plan of using the bad situation as leverage against Democrats to scare them into voting for a larger immigration reform bill (complete with money for his wall and new limits on legal immigration) is simply not going to work. There will have to be a separate bill narrowly targeting the child separation policy which must pass quickly, which will completely foil Trump's grand plan to use it as political leverage. But because of what he said on the White House lawn last Friday, Trump could decide it's in his best interest right now (to say nothing of the interests of all Republican midterm candidates) to just throw in the towel and support a narrow bill to end the child separation.

Trump's got this out, if he chooses to use it. House Republicans must know that their sole job in tonight's meeting is to convince him to take it. This would preserve Trump's fiction that "Congress has to act" (it doesn't, Trump could change the policy with one phone call to Jeff Sessions), which would allow him to save some face publicly. Republicans now look like they're going to coalesce around: "Lock them all up together, even the children!" which must have a certain amount of appeal to Trump, one would think.

The only real question is whether Trump will fight back against taking this convenient out or not. Will he balk at being undermined by his own party in Congress? Will he threaten to veto any bill that doesn't have his wall money (especially since he's already reportedly threatening to shut the government down over the wall funding issue)? Will he dig in his heels or will he face up to the political reality of the situation, which has some of the worst media optics since Hurricanes Maria and Katrina (or even, as Laura Bush pointed out, since the Japanese-American internment camps)? That's what will be interesting to watch, which is why I started the column by saying I'd love to be a fly on the wall for tonight's Republican confab with the president.

-- Chris Weigant

Follow Chris on Twitter: @ChrisWeigant