Trump Time Capsule #36: 'And Everything in Between'
Here’s something that doesn’t “matter” but still is delightful. Ivanka Trump gives a preview of what the attending delegates and accompanying press horde (complete with an Atlantic team including me) will see in person next week in Cleveland, and what the rest of the world can see on TV. Emphasis added:
“It's not going to be a ho-hum lineup of the typical politicians,” daughter Ivanka Trump said more than a week ago. “It's going to be a great combination of our great politicians, but also great American businessmen and women and leaders across industry and leaders across really all the sectors, from athletes to coaches and everything in between.”
All the way from athletes to coaches! (H/t Ari Ofsevit.)
Or, this could be a knowing homage to the Dorothy Parker line about a “striking performance that ran the gamut of emotions, from A to B.”
Here is something that does matter. I don’t have the time or fortitude to re-watch the Trump performance this evening in Westfield, Iowa. You can find the whole tape here (the Man himself comes on around time 1:48.00). But on real-time viewing it was notable.
Less than four months before the general election, a near-nominee is riffing as if the only audience that matters is the GOP base. Highlights:
- Starting around time 2:10:00, “who’s going to pay for that wall?” “I can’t hear you, who’s going to pay??” You can sense him feeling for something that will rev the audience up. And let the record show: past and present leaders of Mexico have made clear that of course they are not going to pay for any such wall. But for Trump it’s a go-to routine to get a cheer.
- Around time 2:13:00, a solution to the knotty and tragic Syria problem. “In Syria, we’ll build safe zones, and we’ll get other people to put up the money.” How? How the hell? Never mind. Literally the next sentence was, “Because soon we are going to owe $20 trillion, with a T …”
- Starting at time 2:14:00, Trump repeats his claim that he was against the Iraq war from the start. This is not true, and every time he says it he needs to be called out on its falsity. To Trump’s credit, he turned against the war faster than some others, once it started going bad. Before it started, he was not among those — those like Barack Obama, like Al Gore, like a handful of Republicans in Congress, like Brent Scowcroft and other conservatives and realists — who warned that it would be a grievous mistake.
Just in case there is any doubt here: Donald Trump was not against the Iraq War when the debate was being held and the decision was being made.
- At time 2:15:50, Trump makes his claim that America has grown so dysfunctional that people were asking for “a moment of silence” for the man who murdered five police officers in Dallas. Maybe I’ve missed it, but I am not aware of any real-world evidence for that claim. Translation: I believe he is yet again making this up.
- Right after that, Trump goes into his “we never win any more” riff, about how the United States is an all-fronts failure.
Lord knows that the United States has more than its share of grave economic, social, racial, public-safety, civic-culture, educational, infrastructure, and other problems, as both the 43rd and the 44th Presidents discussed very soberly this afternoon in Dallas. But if you’re talking in crude “we win” / “we lose” terms, you have to ask: OK, which major nation is “winning” more often, in more ways, than the U.S. now?
It’s preposterous to suggest that the U.S. military is not incomparably the strongest in the world. The U.S. recovery has been unfair, and slow — but it’s been faster and stronger than just about anywhere else. The U.S. range of alliances in most regions of the world is stronger than it has been in decades. (Countries from India to Vietnam to Indonesia to Japan and South Korea are more tightly knit to U.S. strategic interests than in a very long time.)
If “we lose, lose, lose” is Trump’s argument today, what language would be left if, for instance, today’s international-court ruling had been a sweeping rebuke of U.S. policy — rather than of China’s, as it actually was? If he’s talking this way on a day when the U.S. stock markets reached a historic peak, and the U.S. dollar is at recent-record highs against most other currencies, imagine what he’d say during a stock market and currency crash? (Before you point it out: a stock-market rise does not mean a healthy economy. But you know how a stock-market crash would be interpreted.)
Why bother to point this out? Because it does bother me, and should be noted for the record, that we’ve reached a point where we barely notice that a likely nominee is simply making things up, about his own past and about the realities of the world around him.
The original Time Capsule thread is here, with items #1-#27. For entries starting with #28, go here.
For the record, in closing out the day’s events: I agree with Matt Ford’s Atlantic item and other assessments that Ruth Bader Ginsburg was wrong to say, in her role as Supreme Court Justice, things about Donald Trump similar to what I’ve been saying here in my role as guy with a blog.
Institutional roles and responsibilities matter (as she obviously recognizes). The rest of us are citizens, participants, reporters, advocates. Only nine U.S. citizens — eight at the moment, thanks to our Senate — have the life-tenure power to direct the might of the state in ways that affect everyone else.
President Obama doesn’t say every single thing that’s on his mind about race right now — he’ll probably come closer, once he leaves office, but the difference in public roles is the crucial point. Serving flag-officers in the military do not publicly utter every thought they think about their civilian masters; teachers don’t say everything they like and dislike about a child; coaches try not to say every thing they think about the refs. We are all supposed to recognize the constraints that come with certain roles.
If Ruth Bader Ginsburg would like to speak just as freely as any of the rest of us, it would be more seemly to give up the life-tenure powers virtually none of the rest of us possess. (I’m against life tenure in any position of public responsibility, because I think it tempts people to forget the difference between what is interesting / convenient / pleasing to them personally and what is in the public’s best interest in that role. But that’s for another time.)