President Trump is a gift that keeps on giving, but not always in a way that improves his prospects for winning a second term. On the contrary, he often insists on helping his political opponents and the press cling to the anti-Trump narrative they cherish. I assume he does this unwittingly, but who knows? He specializes in following success by taking up a small issue that can do him no political good and, more often than not, is harmful.
We saw this after the best weekend, politically speaking, of his presidency. The president’s stirring speech at Mount Rushmore was a triumph that upset the political equation that established his reelection as nearly impossible. He looked to be capable of a comeback against Joe Biden.
There was a bonus: He fooled the media. They were expecting a speech focusing on Trump’s grievances and political views that they see as nasty. So that’s how they reported the speech. But it was the speech Trump hadn’t given, far from it. He had praised the Revolution and America’s heroes. He double-crossed the press hounds.
After that, Trump could have rested on his laurels for days while conservative journalists took apart the liberal media. Articles by Rich Lowry of the National Review and the Washington Examiner’s Byron York, among others, brilliantly dissected the bad coverage. And Trump must have smiled as he notched a big win over the press.
I’ve argued that Trump should (and probably has plans to) clean up his act for the final three or four months of the campaign. By this, I meant that he would, in effect, alter his personality. He’d cool down and no longer spend large amounts of time acting self-centered, obnoxious, and defensive.
He did exactly that in the closing weeks of the 2016 race after the Hollywood Access tape appeared to have ruined his chances of winning. He became disciplined. His speeches were mostly prepared, and he read them. He curbed his habit of ad-libbing constantly.
It worked, but not by magic. Trump changed into a more likable person, or at least a less unlikable one. Was he faking? Sure. Politicians have been known to do so. And yes, the new Trump was temporary. The old Trump returned, all too soon.
And the old Trump reappeared two days after the Mount Rushmore speech when the president tweeted about the need for race car driver Bubba Wallace to apologize over an incident in which he found what looked like a noose in his garage at the Talladega Superspeedway in Alabama. Got that? No, there’s no China angle.
Wallace, who is black, had earlier called on NASCAR to ban Confederate flags from its tracks, which it agreed to do. The driver discovered what looked like a noose, but it turned out to be a piece of rope tied in a way that made it resemble one. Trump wanted Wallace to acknowledge that it wasn’t a noose, White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany said, something Wallace had already done.
Why would Trump intrude in such a minor matter? The best explanations are that he just wanted to or that he couldn’t help himself. It wasn’t an act by a candidate committed to self-discipline.
There’s a simple reason why Trump benefits from having a tight grip on what he says and tweets. It tends to keep him out of trouble. When he ad-libs an answer to a question, he often has difficulty giving a precise response. That gives journalists an excuse to interpret what he said — rarely with Trump’s best interests in mind.
The March-June months of 2020 have been disastrous for Trump, with the dominant subject, COVID-19, one in which he’s no expert. Lack of knowledge usually doesn’t stop him from answering hard questions — answers to which he might flub. What could be better for an unfriendly reporter than getting the president in trouble for responding to a hostile question? Yet Trump faced reporters for weeks this spring without help from his own experts.
Given his weaknesses, there’s one tool that’s perfect for avoiding trouble: the prepared text. Such a speech would be vetted by the president’s advisers to delete troublesome quotes. There shouldn’t be a vanity problem with having a speechwriter do the hard aide work. A president gets credit even if he’s reading a speech for the first time as he delivers it.
Here’s the short of this. A disciplined Trump has a chance to win. An undisciplined Trump has no chance.
Fred Barnes is a senior columnist for the Washington Examiner.
