President Chauncey Gardiner: ‘Being There’ at the Bait-and-Switch [Updated]
But one of Trump’s campaign advisers suggested Wednesday that Trump might indeed change Social Security and Medicare — but only after he has been in office for a while. “After the administration has been in place, then we will start to take a look at all of the programs, including entitlement programs like Social Security and Medicare,” Sam Clovis said during a public forum, according to a report in the Wall Street Journal.
— Has Donald Trump stolen Paul Ryan’s party out from under him?, David Fahrenthold, Washington Post, today
As the above quote illustrates, Donald Trump hasn’t stolen Paul Ryan’s party out from under him. Fahrenthold didn’t write the headline; he just wrote the article, and the headline writer missed its point, reversing the puppet and the puppeteer.
Unlike Chance, Trump knows he’s being coopted by the Republican establishment and that he is perpetrating a coup-like bait-and-switch on a sizable swath of his primary voters. The most dangerous thing about Trump isn’t even the breadth of his ignorance but instead the casualness with which he has decided to simply front the Club for Growth agenda.
But he does have this in common with President Chauncey Gardiner: the sheer depth of his dumbness. And therefore the completeness of his manipulability. He’s switched entertainment genres, from reality TV to puppet theater.
____
UPDATE: Last weekend after reading an article or two about Trump’s statement to Chuck Todd on Meet the Press that he would like to see the minimum wage increased but wanted it left up to the states, I recognized that Trump was parroting the leave-the-minimum-wage-up-to-the-states standard Republican line, which one of his campaign officials had fed him. I assumed that he knew this was the standard Conservative Movement invocation of “federalism”—a.k.a., states’ rights!—in the service of the Chamber of Commerce/Club for Growth anti-regulatory agenda. These folks, after all, don’t put Republican state legislators and governors into their elected positions for the fun of it.
But I was wrong. The articles I read didn’t quote enough of Trump’s answer.
I just finished reading a post by Paul Waldman on the Washington Post’s Plum Line titled “Trump is waging an assault on the entire structure of our democracy. Now what?”, in which Waldman uses as an illustration Trump’s statements about the minimum wage last fall and his several statements about it within the last four days. Waldman writes:
Speaking [to reporters after his meeting with Trump today, Paul] Ryan said, “It was important that we discussed our differences that we have, but it was also important that we discuss the core principles that tie us together,” and that “Going forward we’re going to go a little deeper in the policy weeds to make sure we have a better understanding of one another.”
This is a fool’s errand, not just for Ryan but for us in the media as well. And it poses a profound challenge to democracy itself.
Just in the last couple of days, something has changed. Perhaps it should have been evident to us before, but for whatever reason it was only partially clear. The pieces were there, but they didn’t fit together to show us how comprehensive Trump’s assault on the fundamentals of American politics truly is….
The foundation of democratic debate is policy, issues, the choices we make about what we as a nation should do. That’s what the government we create does on our behalf: it confronts problems, decides between alternatives, and pursues them. That’s also the foundation of how we in the press report on politics. Yes, we spend a lot of time talking about the personalities involved, but underneath that are competing ideas about what should be done. Should we raise taxes or lower them? Spend more or spend less? Make abortions easier or harder to get? Give more people health coverage or fewer? How do we combat ISIS? How should we address climate change? How can we improve the economy? How can we reduce crime? What sort of transportation system do we want? Which areas should government involve itself in, and which should it stay out of?
We all presume that these questions (and a thousand more) are important, and that the people who run for office should take them seriously. We assume they’ll tell us where they stand, we’ll decide what we think of what they’ve said, and eventually we’ll be able to make an informed choice about who should be the leader of our country.
Donald Trump has taken these presumptions and torn them to pieces, then spat on them and laughed. And so far we seem to have no idea what to do about it.
Let me briefly give an illustration. On the question of the minimum wage, Trump has previously said he would not raise it. Then Sunday he said he did want to raise it. Then in a separate interview on the very same day he said there should be no federal minimum wage at all, that instead we should “Let the states decide.” Then yesterday he said he does want to increase the federal minimum wage.
I clicked on one of the links, which was to the transcript of the Meet the Press interview. Here’s the full exchange between Todd and Trump on the minimum wage:
CHUCK TODD:
Minimum wage. Minimum wage. At a debate, you know. You remember what you said. You thought you didn’t want to touch it. Now you’re open to it. What changed?
DONALD TRUMP:
Let me just tell you, I’ve been traveling the country for many months. Since June 16th. I’m all over. Today I’m in the state of Washington, where the arena right behind me, you probably hear, is packed with thousands and thousands of people. I’m doing that right after I finish you.
I have seen what’s going on. And I don’t know how people make it on $7.25 an hour. Now, with that being said, I would like to see an increase of some magnitude. But I’d rather leave it to the states. Let the states decide. Because don’t forget, the states have to compete with each other. So you may have a governor —
CHUCK TODD:
Right. You want the fed– but should the federal government set a floor, and then you let the states–
DONALD TRUMP:
No, I’d rather have the states go out and do what they have to do. And the states compete with each other, not only other countries, but they compete with each other, Chuck. So I like the idea of let the states decide. But I think people should get more. I think they’re out there. They’re working. It is a very low number. You know, with what’s happened to the economy, with what’s happened to the cost. I mean, it’s just– I don’t know how you live on $7.25 an hour. But I would say let the states decide.
Trump wants to leave minimum-wage legislation entirely up to the states so that the states could compete with each other on how low the wages of their fast-food workers, Walmart employees, hospitality industry workers and home-healthcare aides can go, folks. This would be his aim as president. Because he thinks these workers should get more because they can’t live on $7.25 an hour. And because less is more. And more is less. More or less.
What’s happening here is that Trump hears terms, phrases, lines, clichés that people who talk about policy use, and since he doesn’t understand anything, he just says a memorized policy bottom line—the minimum wage should be left to the states, for example—fed to him from the Republican policy playbook. And then, when asked to elaborate, he starts spewing terms, phrases, lines, clichés that he’s heard people who talk about policy use. And—voila!—we have … non sequiturs.
Update added 5/12 at 6:58 p.m.
I think you’re misreading this Bev. It seems to me that The Donald will do to Movement Conservatism what Hillary will do to Progressives. Once the election is won…who needs em? But until the election they will pay lip service to those important electoral constituencies.
Mr. Trump seems to be just as much of an unprincipled campaigner as Mrs. Clinton…say anything to get what you want.
I will agree that the guy is incredibly ignorant.
But why do you think it is the pro-blue collar agenda rather than the Ayn Ryan agenda that this unprincipled person will adopt?
Will he even know what it is that he’s signing? Will he understand it? Will he care what he signing and what it means?
I mean, Trump watches CNBC. And Lawrence Kudlow is on CNBC! What more affirmance of brilliance does he need?
“I will agree that the guy is incredibly ignorant.”
Agreed, and virtually every speech and interview seems to confirm that assessment of Donald Trump. That being the case how does one explain his appeal amongst the Republican primary voters? They can’t all be that ridiculous in regards to their own inability to recognize a scammer who seems so obvious in his lack of details about the ideas he promotes. This is one strange election cycle. At least Romney and McCain before him had some semblance of political awareness.
To me Mr. Trump seems a caricature of the Tea Party candidate. Look at still images from his political performances. A political cartoon come to life. How does the public that cheers him on not see that? It is unfortunate that it seems like Clinton is the default choice. The American political class could do better. So what is it about the Republican base that blinds them to the absurdity of Donald Trump as a choice for the President of the U.S. of A. Let’s hope that the Democratic Party political machine is capable of producing a few penetrating ads focused on Trump’s most serious short comings.
Clearly a significant portion of his primary voters are the xenophobes, the anti-political-correctness-as-take-no-prisoners-meanness folks, the racists. But those are far more numerous in the South than in the Rust Belt and the Northeast. The Rust Belt and Northeastern voters care far more, by and large, about trade deals and the 1% that controls the political parties and such than about “build the wall”. Which is why once Clinton and others start using Trump’s words from these last several days he will have trouble holding some of those voters.
By the time of the election, these voters will know that he has to choose between Ryan/Ayn Rand and them. And they’ll actually know, finally, what the Republican establishment stands for–and whom it stands for.
That Social Security and Medicare quote is incredibly damning, because it lays it out: After a grace period, it will be Ryan’s dream fiscal policy that Trump will be willing to sign. Puppet-puppeteer.
I don’t think Trump himself knows what he would do once in office.
He has no enduring principles. The best term I’ve heard to describe him is as a type of “situationist”. It’s all about the “deal” , just like he said in his book. He looks for the best bang for the buck , and the only difference between his public and his private deal-making is that as Potus he’ll have to pay as much or more attention to political capital as to monetary capital.
I don’t think he would be looking for ANYTHING in particular in actual policy, Marko. He would just delegate everything to … Lawrence Kudlow, Stephen Moore, Ayn Ryan, and Eugene Scalia.
Ms. Mann- I think Trump knows his base and is more loyal to that base than to Conservative, Inc. I think Trump sees Conservative™ as way to fund his campaign. He does have a history of screwing lenders/investors. I also think he has a deep dislike for the leaders of Conservative® after the primary campaign.
Do any of them really know what they are signing? I doubt Bush read the Patriot Act or Obama read the entire PPACA.
Do people actually listen to CNBC or just watch the “ticker”?
I think Ms. Mann did a good job of describing a portion of Trump’s support but I think there is more to it. A large portion of our popular culture has become course, mean spirited, spiteful and incredibly ignorant. Trump fits right in. Yesterday I saw two bumper stickers. One said “Fuck Trump”. The other said “Al Qaeda for Hillary!” I guess we get what we deserve.
Marko I get that feeling as well!
ON the minimum wage issue in many small towns Wal-Mart sets the minimum wage today at $9.50/hour. I can tell this because in the same shopping center with Wal-Mart is a McDonalds, and it is looking for help at $9.50/hour starting wage as posted on their sign (most fast food places in my town, not a major metro area are looking for help).
Of course because it is a smaller place unemployment was low in the 2006-2007 time frame here also. Just checked and for March it was 3.60 percent, down from 5.8 in 2012.
“Trump wants to leave minimum-wage legislation entirely up to the states so that the states could compete with each other on how low the wages of their fast-food workers, Walmart employees, hospitality industry workers and home-healthcare aides can go.”
If that were the case, why would 32 States have set their Minimum Wages to be HIGHER than the U.S. government requires?
If that were the case, why would 32 States have set their Minimum Wages to be HIGHER than the U.S. government requires? Oh, I dunno, Warren. Maybe because every one of those state minimum-wage statutes was enacted by Democratic-controlled legislatures and signed into law by Democratic governors, or were enacted before ALEC and the Club for Growth took over Republican legislatures and the Republican (Tea) Party?
Are you claiming that the purpose of the state statutes that raise the minimum wage was to compete with other states? Seriously, Warren?
Or are you just missing the point that the subject of that part of my post was Trump’s claim that the benefit of leaving minimum-wage legislation the states was to allow states to COMPETE AGAINST EACH OTHER? Would you care to explain how exactly leaving minimum-wage legislation the states allows states to compete against each other to RAISE the minimum wage?
What a dumb comment. I mean … seriously, Warren.
One thing I’ve found in reading comments, here and elsewhere, by conservatives is that so many conservatives don’t seem to understand the concept of relevance. This is an example.
You’d get more consistent policy statements from a magic 8 ball.
I don’t know. I kinda like the slogan “President Magic 8 Ball!”.
Beverly Mann, for once, has it completely wrong. Chauncey Gardiner was a cypher without ego. Trump is pure ego – all ego, all the time. He has had to answer to no one in his business dealings – except banks, creditors and bankruptcy judges. “I listen to myself. I’m a smart guy.” Larry Kudlow, Paul Manafort, Paul Ryan, Mitch McConnell – none of them will ever tell him what to do; he will use and manipulate them to his heart’s content; he is a man totally without principles, who lies at the drop of a hat – and lies again when he bends over to pick it up, then lies again when he puts it on his head. There is only one good in the world, one purpose of his campaign: To win. The Art of the Deal moved to the political realm. “I set my sights high and never give up.” And in that game, there are no rules but winning.
Ego or lack of it isn’t really relevant to my point, ms 57. What matters is that neither Chauncey Gardiner nor Donald Trump knows anything about policy nor–key here–cares about policy nor even has the intellectual capacity to understand it. Trump, like Gardiner, is just an empty vessel, policy-wise, into which anyone who gains the means to feed him a policy agenda can do that.
Trump is pulling something that I think he is going to get away with, which is that he can just say all kinds of things that appeal to certain people, but when people who dislike those things complain, well, he just disavows them or “walks them back,” maybe, for a little while, whatever. So he gains with those who like this stuff, but he manages to avoid being really held accountable seriously for any of it (“that is just a suggestion”). So none of us really know what his positions are on anything, and he in fact may not really have any. It is all about him and his ego and his claim to power, and those who are impressed will vote for him.
What I worry about on this is remembering the Carter-Reagan race. About this time in 1980 Dems were hoping Reagan would be the nominee. He had just said that “trees cause pollution” (which is technically correct if one counts pollen as pollution), which had led to him having very low poll ratings. Oh boy, the Dems were drooling at the prospect of running against this numbskull who would say all kinds of goofy stuff in contrast to more serious candidates like BWH Bush.
Now of course there were other reasons Reagan won, including a bad economy and the embarrassment of the Iran hostage crisis, but I remember all too well the first debate between them, which was universally viewed as a victory by Reagan, with Carter never recovering after that in the polls. I remember that if one was paying close attention, Carter “won on points,” doing well at pointing out the silliness of much of what Reagan was saying. But then there was that magic moment when after Carter criticized him for his warmongering foreign policy statements, Reagan just leaned back and said, “There you go again,” and that was it. He won the debate on a single well-delivered phrase that was in fact devoid of content. But, it sold.
So I fear that whether it is Hillary or Bernie (still has a small chance, much better if HRC gets indicted before the convention), they can win on points showing how nonsensical statement after statement Trump has said is, but then he wins the darned debate with some wisecrack along the lines of what Reagan pulled with Carter.
As it is, both Hillary and Bernie are seriously wonkish, with pretty well developed platforms. We have seen extended discussions and debates about their positions on various issues here, and it is known that Hillary especially has a very long and detailed set of positions, with some charging that she has overdone it going too wonkish. Unlike others I do not think she will just drop all that the minute she gets in, if she gets in, but I do think that both she and Bernie will end up modifying what they advocate when face a GOP-controlled House, which I think is highly likely, even if hopefully the Dems do manage to take the Senate.
But there is a real possibility of a replay of 1980, whichever of them is the Dem candidate.
Barkley, I certainly share your fear that Trump actually could pull this off, but I don’t think your analogy to Carter-Reagan works. Key here is the generational change. Reagan had been a two-term governor of California, and although even back in 1980 I had only a pretty general idea of what he’d done as governor, I read a detailed article recently discussing his actions during the Free Speech Movement (that’s what it was called, right?) at Berkeley. It was pretty aggressive, rough stuff.
I don’t think I realized back in 1980—or at least I don’t remember doing so—that apparently a part of Reagan’s appeal to blue-collar whites and I guess to some WWII and Korean War generation, and Silent Generation voters was an anti-counterculture persona, which still mattered, a lot, in 1980.
After all, the Vietnam War had ended only six years earlier. And the Cold War was still very much raging.
What I remember about the 1980 election was a dog-whistle racist appeal to blue-collar whites, coupled with inflation that seemingly could not be brought under control and for what unions (along with the oil cartel) was given substantial blame. The unions would incorporate anticipated high inflation into their three-year wage contracts, providing part of the inflation spiral—so Reagan’s anti-union schtik didn’t have the normal effect on union members.
But more than anything else, there was the Iran hostage situation—which, it later was reported, continued past the election because Reagan somehow quietly was able to communicate with Iran’s powers-that-be that they should hold out until after the election and that Reagan, as president, would negotiate better terms with them. (Like Nixon’s secret plan to end the war!!)
The reason that the “There you go again” line was so effective was that a key thing that Carter had going for him was something similar to a key thing that Johnson had going for him against Goldwater: a real fear that he could start a nuclear confrontation or actual war. So “There you go again” was a promise that he was not Goldwater on the issue of confrontation with the Soviet Union, and would instead use other means against it. It was, in other words, a promise that Reagan would avoid nuclear war, not precipitate it. And although Reagan, like Trump, was a pathological liar, he was not so obvious a one.
Nor did Reagan gyrate wildly between opposite policy positions, nor come off as clueless about policy and the workings of government, nor seem care about policy. To the contrary, Reagan was all about ideology and therefore policy proposals.
So while it’s not inconceivable that Trump could beat Hillary Clinton, I guess the bottom line on that is: I knew Ronald Reagan. Ronald Reagan was no friend of mine. And, Donald Trump, you’re no Ronald Reagan. Nor is today’s electorate the 1980 electorate.
As for the possibility of a Clinton indictment, I think it’s virtually nil. But if something major happens before the Convention, then as long as Sanders manages to keep Clinton from clinching with pledged delegates, I think that there would be a consensus draft of Warren or (possibly but less likely, in my opinion) Biden, now that the story was published that he would ask Warren to be his running mate.
“both she and Bernie will end up modifying what they advocate when face a GOP-controlled House ” Neither candidate will be able to do 1% of what they are campaigning on. And that will be true until at least 2020, and that is if the DP can hold Sanders bros people in the party.
If Sanders is the nominee they will probably stay loyal to Sanders for one election cycle, while Clinton of course will start getting bashed a day or two after inauguration. Sanders would get another two years before they turned on him.
The assumption is that HRC is going to be elected. Clearly everyone on these pages finds it impossible to believe that Trump could actually win, for all sorts of reasons. We should remember that all of those arguments we can muster against Trump are red meat for Trump supporters. Her big problem is the charisma factor – she does not generate any real enthusiasm for her campaign except for a segment of women and Democratic stalwarts, but she does generate open hostility from one-third (or more) of the populace and many of Bernie’s supporters – and there are a lot of them. Trump supporters, however, will be pouring out of the mountains and into the polls. Her one path to redemption is Trump himself, who will surely revert back to fighting form and attack her in the meanest and most degrading terms, turning off more women, independents and moderate Republicans (who still exist and make up about one-third of the GOP — social liberals, fiscal conservatives).
If she’s smart she’ll choose Elizabeth Warren for her Veep: Warren has a lot of respect among those same independents and moderate Republicans; she’s clearly game to counterattack Trump at every turn, leaving Hillary free to be “Presidential;” a two-women ticket is very appealing against the misogynistic Trump; and it would go a long way to convince Bernie’s supporters to hold their noses and vote for Hillary-Warren.
In the end, HRC has a real problem with enthusiasm while Trump does not.
The idea that there are actually Sanders supporters(I am one of them) who will not vote for Clinton versus Trump is one of the saddest things I have ever heard.
Of course they will be proud of their “moral purity”.
oops
I am a Sanders supporters but I will certainly vote for Clinton and I will work the polls on election day.
Beverly Mann,
I understood your point, but 1) no matter how deplorable Trump is, he is intelligent, and 2) his ego fills the empty vessel. Here is a guy who has been running his own business his whole life, much of it on instinct and ego. “I listen to myself. I’m a very smart guy.” His whole campaign has defied all generally-accepted guidelines for how to run a campaign; he has listened to himself. I don’t think Kudlow et al. are going to pour anything into him that he will accept as an empty vessel. The GOP keeps talking about — keeps pinning their hopes on — being able to manage him once in office. It’s a pipe dream.
But the very idea that he has appointed Kudlow to help draft tax policy, or that his latest hire on energy policy is a climate change-denier, or that he has said he will let the Heritage Foundation determine his Supreme Court nominees, is, to say the least, astounding. But I don’t believe him for a minute. Got a problem with Conservatives’ antipathy to the very idea you might be President? Make nice with Conservatives. His tactics are “flexible.” His strategy is Trump — winning no matter what.
Trump’s base of stone cold bircher racists could care less about his other policies.
I will make a prediction. Trump will lose the state of AZ. It was fairly close with Romney in 12; more minority voters this year: and a lot of my RWDW golf buddies have already given up on this year.
I agree, re AZ. And I don’t think FL will even be close.
Beverly,
Mostly agree to your reply to my comment. You are right that Reagan had an ideological consistency about him that Trump does not. OTOH, Reagan like Trump came out of being a liberal (or at least semi-liberal) Democrat, although it is much murkier in the case of Trump than with Reagan, although Reagan’s switch had happened a good 30 years or so prior to the 1980 election, even as he held some postiions consistently all the way through, such as being pro-free trade.
On the matter of “There you go again,” certainly he was dismissing Carter’s comparison of him with Goldwater, but he in fact he nearly brought us to nuclear war in the fall of 1983, very close, as the show “The Americans” last Wednesday makes clear, even if in his second term he negotiated nuclear deals with Gorbachev. I think it was more him drawing on his movie star charisma, which is exactly what Trump might be able to pull. This is part of why he has been getting away with wisecracks about others that re not even true,but he delivers them so well.
“Are you claiming that the purpose of the state statutes that raise the minimum wage was to compete with other states?”
No, I am saying that, since more than half of the States have raised their Minimum Wages above what the U.S. government requires, the idea that States will compete to lower their Minimum Wages if the U.S. government stops requiring one simply has no basis in fact.