There are a lot of grating things about Trump’s critics, but perhaps the most frustrating one for me is how so many of them still fail to understand the fact that so much of what he says and does has to be understood not as literal statements of what he thinks at any given moment, but rather as tools of persuasion meant to move people into doing what he wants.
He is a businessman. A salesman. A hype man. He is an American type more akin to P.T. Barnum than a college professor or a traditional diplomat.
We can argue about whether that is the best temperament for a president–sometimes it is great, and other times it is grating–but whenever I hear somebody decry some departure Trump has made from his previous utterances, I roll my eyes. More often than not, Trump did change positions–his ultimate goal is the same–he just tailored his new statements based on new conditions.
Remember the horrible things he said about Ron DeSantis in the primary season? He has certainly changed his tune after DeSantis endorsed him, right? That’s what Trump does- whatever he needs to do to get to his end goal.
Before you roll your eyes and say that means Trump was lying before, or that this proves he is a hypocrite, let me concede up front that in a sense that is true–but only in a sense. Trump is very up front about being a hype man, and most of the time his “lies” are sarcasm or hyperbole, both of which ordinary people understand right away. Many of the things Trump says are clearly not meant to be taken literally, which is why people at Trump rallies think that critics who parse out every statement for “falsehoods” are practically insane.
I was thinking about this while reading over the commentary from NeverTrumpers claiming that Trump blinked, even did an about-face on China tariffs. They argued that, since he dropped the tariff rates on China after all their criticism of him, he clearly blinked. Worse, Trump is trying to cut deals intended to lower tariffs, proving that he lied when he said he loved them.
Whatever. Trump praised tariffs to high heaven and slapped ridiculous tariffs on our trading partners as opening moves to speed up negotiations and make the people across the table nervous. That is obvious now, although it was not quite so obvious before he started negotiating. That’s why I remained cautiously optimistic about Trump’s ultimate goal–I THOUGHT I knew what he was doing, but Trump was ambiguous enough to make everybody nervous–which was the whole point.
All politicians–all negotiators, in fact–do this to some extent. But in traditional diplomacy among non-hostile countries, where negotiations generally take years, the rhetoric is cooler and the ambiguities are minimized.
That approach, too, is filled with other types of deceptions that never seem to bother the people who go crazy when Trump speaks.
For instance, I have yet to see a NeverTrump get upset when politicians do their “My esteemed colleague” routine, which as often as not includes people who despise each other pretending that they don’t. Nor have we seen them go through the roof when our allies promise to fulfill their treaty obligations and then merrily go on their way, ignoring them. Nor are any of the people who count every “lie” Trump tells calling for every Biden associate who lied about his acuity to be drummed out of society.
Media folks who bash Trump daily for his “lies” sit next to colleagues who worked in Biden’s communications staff (Jen Psaki, anyone?) without calling for their ouster. Jake Tapper is whining that he was “lied to” by Biden staffers, but I have yet to see him call for his CNN colleague Kate Bedingfield, who was White House Communications Director, to be fired.
It’s not the deviation from the absolute truth that bothers them, but rather the tone with which it is done. As I have often said, it is a cultural repulsion to Trump’s Brooklyn braggadocio, not a genuine concern for speaking the truth with precision.
Personally, I would much rather live in a world where people negotiate and make deals without all the posturing, although I am pretty sure none of us wants to live in a world where everybody’s words are absolutely accurate regarding what they think. “Your baby is ugly” is probably not the best thing to say to a mother, even if you think so.
By now, everybody should know not to take anything Trump says absolutely literally, just as few people believe that when a salesman says “this is my final offer,” they are speaking the gospel truth. There is always ambiguity, just as there usually is when any politician speaks. What he is doing is just an exaggerated version of that.
Trump doesn’t speak in syllogisms; he negotiates. Hence, deviations from prior statements are to be expected because that is what happens in negotiations.
No doubt, this is frustrating to people who want to say, “Trump believes X to be true or Y to be the best policy.” That’s not how Trump works, for better or worse.
You can criticize him for that and argue that there are better ways to achieve his goals–probably not–or criticize his goals themselves. But assuming that Trump has done a 180 because he changed his tune is a misunderstanding of the man and how he works. It didn’t take a genius to know that Trump was not going to end with the same tariff regime on China he imposed a few weeks ago. That was never the goal in the first place.
All Trump cares about is getting the deal done. Everything he says and does beforehand is part of the negotiation. That makes it hard for political analysts to look smart, explaining everything Trump says as if they have insight they don’t. But that is their problem, not Trump’s.
