The Only Question that Matters with Trump

For my own self-care, I tend to avoid watching interviews or speeches from President Trump.  This isn't easy, and surprisingly comes with a bit of condescension from my more progressive friends.  This isn't to say I don't read about him or am not aware of his actions and policies.  I read transcripts of his interviews regularly, and will listen to summaries from respected journalists of speeches he or his cabinet members have given.  I don't follow him on Twitter, but thanks to the blessed Real Press Secretary Bot, I see his tweets without his smirking face attached.  I like to stay informed, but Trump bothers me, particularly when he's pandering, and I don't like pandering, quite frankly, from even my own party.  It's why I don't enjoy, say, name-calling to Trump (and try not to indulge in it, though occasionally I fail), and why I only enjoy red meat when I can see it turning into tangible policy.  It's probably the reason I preferred wonkish, introverted Hillary Clinton to the fiery speeches of Bernie Sanders or even the moving oratory of Barack Obama.  Trump, though, can't be compared to either of those two men for a lot of reasons, but perhaps more so because he doesn't really seem to have anything of substance to back up his claims.

This shouldn't be confusing, or really up for debate.  You can see it in virtually every major issue.  Lest we forget that Trump was hounding "Rocket Man" just months ago, trying to get under his skin, egging him on while our allies in the South Pacific (not to mention our citizens in Hawaii and Guam) watched on in horror as he so cavalierly disregarded their safety.  You saw it in the way that Trump quickly agreed to language about gun control from Democratic Senators Dianne Feinstein and Amy Klobuchar, running in the face of his party's beliefs, and then suddenly he's against the same things he agreed to in a room brimming with cameras.  Perhaps the only thing that Trump consistently does is agree to things that are pro-Trump (not pro-Republican or pro-America, because those are consistently overlooked even if you're peering from a traditionally conservative vantage point), but pro-Trump.  It's why his repeated attacks on the press and the Mueller investigation are so consistent (since both are frequent to criticize him, and in the latter's case, indict figures from his campaign/administration), and why his constant praise of Russia and Vladimir Putin is so shocking.  Trump's reluctance to attack Russia is the only consistent policy initiative that Trump doesn't clearly-and-obviously gain from, either through money or through adoration.

This should be obvious to anyone who is trying to be objective, and yet I had a striking sense of dread when I heard NPR coverage of the Trump deal, as they clearly didn't understand this aspect of Trump, and couldn't bare to speak the cold, hard truth out loud: "Trump has no strategy."  There was much speculation about what Trump wanted to achieve in North Korea, but after weeks of hearing that he was going to "wing it," and after he repeatedly insulted the Prime Minister of Canada for no apparent reason, while waging an expensive and potentially damaging trade war with America's closest allies, the NPR analysts were  discussing him as if they were talking about a rational person.  A smart person.  Someone who has a clearly defined philosophy, but that's not the case with Donald Trump.  We're not used to this and have never experienced this from another major US politician (Sarah Palin came the closest, but even she had an ideology), so I get why the press was confused by him during his campaign, thinking that he was simply a more vocal partisan of the Republican Party's more traditional viewpoints, a Larry McDonald meets Ron Paul with a healthy dose of Thurston Howell just for kicks.  But Trump's only goal here was to pronounce it a success.  You see that in how there was nothing tangible coming out of the agreement, and how Trump gave in on the military drills that we had conducted with South Korea, with no advance approval from either South Korea nor the Pentagon.  Trump wanted the fame, the cameras of the world on him, and the "historic" aspects of this meeting (mainly for people in the media to call him "historic"), and he wanted to pronounce it a success.  It goes along with the Pro-Trump philosophy, and therefore Trump genuinely views this as a success, because he got what he wanted out of it.

But the media, unable to see their own complicit nature in perpetuating this view can't wrap their head around this idea, and it's allowing Trump to continue to remain teflon.  The lead questions from George Stephanopolous (who was the first sit-down interview with the president not conducted by FOX News in over a year) should not be about the "special bond" for Trump with Kim-it should be on policy, because it feeds Trump's ego to talk about a "special bond" and makes it seem like the most important thing here was Trump, not what Trump's actions mean for the world.  Discussions of the Trump meeting should take the tactic of "how is Trump benefiting from this?" and questions should be geared toward underlining of the answer to that is "yes" but the public good is still not gaining.  There should be questions, for example, about why Trump views the North Korean deal as a better one than Iran, and what the difference in his philosophy is.  There should be questions about Ivanka Trump's business dealings in China, and whether it's appropriate for her to be involved in policy initiatives that she can profit directly from, particularly since a change in policy seemed to coincide with Ms. Trump receiving lucrative patents from China.

This should be a focal point of the discussion, because in assuming that Trump has a traditional policy, you miss the actual story.  Trump is not "crazy like a fox," he's just greedy and stupid.  He's smart in the sense that he understands how to manipulate the system to get what he wants, smart in the way a four-year-old is when they throw a tantrum in front of his mom's boss to get candy, but he isn't intelligent enough to put a rational, structured argument around when it comes to his policy.  Stephanopolous asks him about the failure of the Clinton administration (and the Bush administration later on) to hold Kim Jong-Il to the agreements put forth by Madeleine Albright's talks with the current North Korean leader's father, and Trump's answers can be summarized as "it'll work this time because I said so" ignoring the fact that Trump doesn't have a clear idea of why the Clinton administration ultimately failed on North Korea.  This is the same argument put forth by the president and his team about why his economic policies will work, or really every major policy shift he latches onto as POTUS.  Trump isn't smart enough, and is incapable of doing the work to be smart enough, to have cogent policy positions on trade, North Korea, and immigration.  The people around him might be (Kellyanne Conway and John Bolton are smart people, even if they believe abhorrent things), but Trump himself is not rational or intelligent to put analysis into his thought pattern, unless you look at it entirely from the lens of "how does this benefit Trump?" and he's too conceited to defer to more intelligent people to handle the thornier portions of his public policy.  Other people may believe in Trump for a variety of issues, but Trump is only out for himself.  His family is only out for himself.  And his administration is only out for how they can keep Trump happy while they also enact their own views.  He doesn't have opinions unless they help him, and that's how the media needs to operate until we have someone of some sort of guiding principle in charge of the country again.  Otherwise the media will continue to play chess while the president is playing bombardment, throwing balls at the board while journalists thoughtfully put the pieces back on the table, waiting for him to start playing their game and not realizing that they are never going to win.