Washington (CNN) “On
Thursday night, President Donald Trump accepted the Republican
presidential nomination for a second term. Twenty-four hours
earlier, he had a very hard time saying exactly what he would do with another
four years.
“‘But so I think, I think it would be, I think
it would be very, very, I think we'd have a very, very solid, we would continue
what we're doing, we'd solidify what we've done, and we have other things on
our plate that we want to get done,’ Trump told The New York Times'
Peter Baker.
Yes, that's the quote. And no, it makes no
sense.
“Which really shouldn't surprise anyone paying
attention. Trump has repeatedly struggled to articulate why he wants a second
term -- and what he would do with it -- over these last few months.
“Last month, in an interview with Fox News'
Sean Hannity, Trump offered this up when
asked about four more years: ‘One of the things that will be really great --
the word experience is still good, I always say talent is more important than
experience, I've always said that -- but the word experience is a very
important word, a very important meaning. I never did this before, never slept
over in Washington. I was in Washington maybe 17 times and all of a sudden I'm
the President of the United States, you know the story, riding down
Pennsylvania Avenue with our first lady and I say this is great but I didn't
know very many people in Washington, it wasn't my thing. I was from Manhattan,
from New York, and now I know everybody. And I have great people in the
administration. You make some mistakes, like an idiot like Bolton, you don't
have to drop bombs on everybody.’
(Sidebar: That is 138 words of not
answering the question.)
“Then, days later, Eric Bolling, an anchor for
conservative Sinclair Broadcasting, gave Trump a second chance. Which he didn't
take. Here's part of how Trump answered Bolling's second
term question:
“‘We're going to make America great again.
We've rebuilt the military, we have a ways to go. We've done things for the
vets like nobody's ever seen. We can do even more -- we did choice, as you
know, we did accountability. What we've done nobody's been able to do. But we
have more to do... At the end of our first
term, it's going to be great, it would have been phenomenal. We got hit with
the plague. At the end of the second term, it's going to be at a level that
nobody will have ever seen a country. We're doing it, whether it's trade,
whether it's military -- all made in the USA, so important. Made in the USA.
... We've got to bring back our manufacturing and I brought it back very big,
but we have to make our own pharmaceutical products, our own drugs, prescription
drugs.’
“Again, what? Trump's answers about his second
term tend to be a recitation of what he did in his first term -- and then sort
of a vague promise to do, uh, more of that. Or, in the words of Vice President
Mike Pence at the Republican convention on Wednesday night: ‘Make America Great
Again. Again.’
“Trump has never been a big planner -- or
someone who sees long-term. This excerpt from The Art of the
Deal is one of the most important passages to understand both
Trump and his approach to life -- and the presidency:
“‘Most people are surprised by the way I work.
I play it very loose. I don't carry a briefcase. I try not to schedule too many
meetings. I leave my door open. You can't be imaginative or entrepreneurial if
you've got too much structure. I prefer to come to work each day and just see
what develops. There is no typical week in my life. I wake up most mornings
very early, around six, and spend the first hour or so of each day reading the
morning newspapers. I usually arrive at my office by nine, and I get on the
phone. There's rarely a day with fewer than fifty calls, and often it runs to
over a hundred. In between, I have at least a dozen meetings. The majority
occur on the spur of the moment, and few of them last longer than fifteen
minutes. I rarely stop for lunch. I leave my office by six-thirty, but I
frequently make calls from home until midnight, and all weekend long.’
“‘I play it very loose.’ ‘I prefer to come to
work each day and just see what develops.’ ‘I have at least a dozen meetings.
The majority occur on the spur of the moment, and few of them last longer than
fifteen minutes.’
“Trump is -- and has always been -- far more
reactive than proactive. He isn't someone any sort of blueprint he is following
or even a general sense of where he would like a day/week/month/year of his
presidency to wind up. Things happen. He reacts. Then he reacts to the
reaction. It's why Trump loves Twitter so much; he can gauge reaction in real
time and then respond accordingly.
“This approach, of course, has its downsides.
Mostly that Trump's first term has felt like a constant lurching between a
panoply of issues and grievances as opposed to any sort of steady attempt to
push a few core principles or policies. So, when Trump is asked about a second
term, he's unable to come up with any sort of cohesive answer -- descending instead
into a sort of laundry list of stuff he's done (or thinks he done) in his first
four years.
“The real answer of what a second Trump term
would look like? Exactly like his first term: Seat-of-the-pants
decision-making, policy being created to fit a spontaneous tweet and lots (and
lots) of chaos” (CNN).
ReplyDeleteBrian Klaas
@brianklaas
"Trump has tweeted or retweeted at least 86 times today by my count. It's 9 am in Washington. There's a raging global pandemic, unrest, a hurricane that just hit the south, and Trump is spending his day rage tweeting on Twitter at a pace of about one tweet every two minutes."