President Trump has a profound disinterest in the presidency. He prefers to view the office through the lense of television media as opposed to through the lense of his actual, physical responsibilities as commander in chief. He watches around eight hours of TV every day according to his associates. While Mr. Trump vehemently denies such an assessment, his habits, his attitudes and general way of doing things seem to affirm it. Trump’s tweets often reflect topics covered on Fox and Friends, a morning tv show he has lavished constant praise upon for only giving him positive coverage. Moreover, Trump’s cabinet is increasingly becoming one of his favored tv pundits like Larry Kudlow and John Bolton. Donald Trump also spends more time talking, tweeting and obsessing over the media than perhaps any other president in modern memory. Many suspect his Amazon tweet storms were driven by his hatred of the Washington Post, owned by Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos. “I watch the shows,” said then-candidate Trump on where he gets military advice.
This trend makes sense. Donald Trump made a name for himself by starring on a reality tv show. He made constant appearances on opinion tv shows including Fox and Friends to riff on various political topics before he ran for office. Moreover, Mr. Trump has a profound disdain towards reading and books. Tony Schwartz who ghost-wrote for Trump The Art of the Deal speculated, “I seriously doubt that Trump has ever read a book straight through in his adult life.” Donald Trump reportedly does not read daily intelligence briefings. In fact, few photographs exist of Donald Trump in the vicinity of book shelves. In terms of reading habits, the president told Axios, “I like bullets or I like as little as possible.”
This dislike of words on paper and enchantment of tv arguably parallels with what seem to be lazy impulses from the president. Donald Trump loves golf (although he generally hates exercise, believing it kills people). He has spent over 25% of his presidency so far at his own golf clubs. This fact is particularly compelling, because Mr. Trump mercilessly ripped his predecessor Obama over hitting the links, contrasting it with his promise to “stay in the white house and work my ass off.”
Why does all of this matter? This aversion to reading, this obsession over TV, the tweetstorms and this love of golf all portray Donald Trump as a largely aloof, lazy, superficial and removed president. He speaks about important issues in simplistic, monosyllabic, tv-like soundbites with expressions along the lines of, “we’re doing great on the economy.”
These habits have their impact on real policy as well. When President Trump had instincts to repair a crumbling national infrastructure through government stimulus, austerity-minded congressional republicans easily swayed him away from that proposal. Trump did not have the initiative or the drive to successfully counter with his own plan. On the campaign trail, Donald Trump ripped American foreign policy for having kept the US military in Afghanistan since 2001. As President, Mr. Trump signed on to extend America’s 17-year long commitment in “the graveyard of empires” after his national security team showed him a picture of Afghan women in the 1970s in western fashion attire.
Donald Trump promised in Ohio that the US would be leaving Syria, “very soon,” due to ISIS being defeated, only for the president to do another round of cruise missile strikes on the Syrian government in the following weeks in what was largely seen as a symbolic gesture. This act, while blaring headline news at the the time, did little to change the reality on the ground of indefinite US involvement in Syria along with Assad likely remaining in power thanks to Russian and Iranian hegemony over most of the country. All of this was essentially a big twitter announcement, a sudden change in course, a flash in the pan and then more or less back to square 1. On the world stage, this whole event, aside from increased Russian anger, probably amount to much ado about nothing, signaling again the largely underwhelming nature of the Trump Administration. The Syrian chemical weapons program remains significantly intact, with foreign policy experts ripping Trump for doing what amounted to more or less a $100 million tax payer funded publicity stunt. Trump, no doubt pleased with himself, after the strike tweeted, “Mission accomplished!”
This trend is also apparent in the recent Omnibus bill, panned by those in Trump’s base. The $1.3 trillion spending bill, embraced by the likes of Paul Ryan and Mitch McConnell, explicitly forbids a wall being built on the US southern border, effectively negating the president’s grandiose soundbite from his campaign. While Donald Trump dramatically floated the possibility of vetoing the bill, he signed it anyway, proving the whole affair to be anticlimactic.
No one outside of Washington really liked the Omnibus spending bill. The size of it alone makes any traditional fiscal hawk conservative recoil, Trump’s base is left feeling bait and switched and it will not drive liberals or centrists into Mr. Trump’s ranks anytime soon.
While the Omnibus Bill did not reflect President Trump’s significant campaign promises, some of its provisions did reflect his general way of thinking. It contains a staggering $700 billion in defense-related expenditures. Reflecting on the massive spending bill, Donald Trump bragged to children at the White House Easter Egg Roll, “Just think of $700 billion dollars because that’s all going into our military this year.” Mr. Trump seems to have a simple-minded approach that more spending on a project is good simply because it means more spending.
Never mind inefficiencies, waste, fraud or abuse that can become associated with bloated public sector budgets. Never mind the staggering debts and deficits, which will be amplified by government revenue decreases brought on by the president’s corporate tax cuts. In fact, long-term outlook on America’s growing debt does not worry the self-styled “king of debt.” Never mind where that short-termism led Greece, Argentina and Illinois.
From Mr. Trump’s point of view more spending equals more benefits. He did not stop and consider that the United States has more military expenditures than eight major nations combined-including America’s two main military competitors-China and Russia-many of America’s European allies and America’s top ally in Asia, Japan.
At the end of the day, Donald Trump seems to have a comic book-like conception about how the world works, which negatively impacts his political instincts. When the stock market roared post-election, Mr. Trump could not stop bragging on Twitter, despite the fact that the stock market means very little as an overall indicator of the average American’s economic well being. Mr. Trump glowingly rhapsodizes his corporate tax cuts as a key selling point to voters, failing to realize that around 47% of American voters (many of whom voted for Mr. Trump in 2016) pay nothing in federal income tax. More than half of Americans saw no increase in take-home pay after the enactment of Mr. Trump’s corporate tax cuts. Few Republican primary voters flocked to Trump in the first place over tax policy largely indistinguishable from his 16 rivals.
While Trump is branded as a “populist” fighting for American workers feeling left behind by globalization, he has embraced America’s financial elite as president. He craves Wall Steet’s admiration and respect. His cabinet is worth over $4.3 billion, the richest in modern American history. Trump essentially blurted out to his supporters that he does not think poor people are qualified to be in positions of power. While he skewered rivals Ted Cruz and Hillary Clinton as being puppets of Goldman Sachs, President Donald Trump has appointed former Goldman employees to key positions in his administration and bragged about it afterwards. Again reflecting his comic book-like understanding of the world, Donald Trump lazily equates good governance of the United States economy with being wealthy. This trend should not be surprising for a man who covers his penthouse apartment in gold.
Mr. Trump’s understanding of the presidency and of the world will spell disaster for the Republicans in 2018. Those who flocked to him in the rust belt hoping for populism did not get it. Sure, the economy is humming along nicely, but most of the President’s promises of upending a political and economic elite remain unfulfilled. Far from “draining the swamp,” Mr. Trump has grown to accept it.
