It’s for real this time.
President-elect Trump is finally making the pivot into being a serious and somber politician.
All those other articles over the past 17 months saying the same thing were wrong, obviously. But this Axios article published this week is different. The pivot is finally here. Or something.
“Behind the scenes, [Trump is] confronting, and in some cases succumbing (slightly) to, the hard truths of governing and leading a world that hangs on his every word,” write Mike Allen and Jim VandeHei, who interviewed the president-elect this week.
“[W]e found the incoming president unusually subdued: lowering expectations, acknowledging some of the messy realities of governing, and walking back some of the more provocative statements he had made only days before. A top adviser told us the sober tone reflects a bumpy few days inside Trump Tower — and the realization that he’s days away from truly running the nation,” they added.
As possible proof of this supposed pivot, Allen and VandeHei cite Trump seemingly backtracking on his recent comments on health insurance and border adjustment. Also, they theorized, Trump receiving regular security briefings may have him taking the role to which he was elected more seriously.
“Trump seemed, dare we say, humbled by recent intelligence briefings on global threats. Dick Cheney’s friends used to tell us he was a decidedly darker, changed man once he started reading the daily intel reports after 9/11. Trump seemed moved by what he’s now seeing,” they wrote.
Uh huh. I’ve heard this story before. I’ve heard it maybe a dozen times since June 2015.
Pardon me if I take this latest iteration of a very worn out narrative with a large grain of salt.
