It’s smart politics to leave the unpopular decisions up to a large body of opinionated people.
“I would have voted for it, you know, but it just never got out of committee ..”
“I just couldn’t sign it the way they loaded it up with pork, you see ...”
“I couldn’t support that bill, it was very self-serving to the other party ...”
And this is how the unpopular stuff is supposed to die.
Trump understands this perfectly well.
Or leave the unpopular decisions up to one person.
That's how you end up, for example, with a useless jerk like John McCain criticizing Barack Obama for lifting the military ban on "transgenders" in 2016 ... and then criticizing President Trump for reinstituting the ban in 2017.
If you're a Navy pilot and you've lost four aircraft in your career, you might as well become a U.S. Senator because that's the place where people go when they aren't even good at what they do for a living.
These people are about 400 miles south of useless by any objective measure.