Donald Trump says he wants to talk about issues.
In a telephone interview on Meet the Press yesterday, Trump said he was looking forward to interviews where he could talk about policy. “I want to get back to the country,” he insisted. “We have such problems. We have unemployment that’s incredible. We need jobs. We have to get jobs back from China. That’s the subjects [sic] that I’m good at.”
But rather than offering details on his plan to get jobs back from China, Trump abruptly changed the subject to his favorite topic: Trump.
“By the way, during that whole debate, which was 24 million people, and if I wasn’t on they would have had two million people, and everybody admits that.”
Nobody has actually admitted that, of course, and while Trump is correct that he was a major factor in generating a big audience, interest in this year’s GOP contest is high even without him. The play-in debate drew six million people at 5 p.m. – an extraordinary number not only because it aired outside primetime, but also because it featured candidates all polling below 3 percent.
But facts are no impediment for a Trump with momentum and he was rolling. Trump declared once again that he wants to talk about issues and then once again changed the subject to his greatness.
“You would have had just another debate that nobody would have watched,” he said. “So, you know, that’s one of those things. But I want to get back to jobs. They didn’t ask me one question about jobs! And every single poll says I am the best by triple digits on jobs and the economy.”
A triple digit lead? In every single poll? Perhaps that’s just one of those things.
The Trump for president reality show is not built on policy. As others have noted, Trump’s campaign website doesn’t have an “issues” section. His policy pronouncements in interviews have been vague and often self-contradictory: he’s not opposed to government-run health care but he’d replace Obamacare with something terrific; he’d address trade with China by sending better negotiators; he’d handle Iraq by seizing the oil fields. And on it goes.
Trump says he’s upset that he didn’t get asked about jobs at the debate. Perhaps when he’s done remaking American politics in his image, he can require debate moderators to ask candidates only about subjects they’re “good at.” Until then, he’s going to have to answer questions about a variety of subjects, and judging by his answers to policy questions in the Fox News debate, Trump may want to think twice about encouraging more talk about issues.
Trump took three policy questions last week – one on immigration, one on health care and one on national security. He refused to answer the first, gave a head-scratching answer to the second, and on the third…well, you’ll just have to read the whole thing for yourself.
The first question came from Chris Wallace, who noted that Trump claimed the Mexican government is sending criminals, rapists and drug dealers across the border and asked Trump to provide the “evidence” he claims to have supporting these claims. “You have evidence you have refused or declined to share. Why not use this first Republican presidential debate to share your proof with the American people?”
Here is Trump’s answer:
The fact is, since then, many killings, murders, crime, drugs pouring across the border, are money going out and the drugs coming in. And I said we need to build a wall, and it has to be built quickly. And I don’t mind having a big beautiful door in that wall so that people can come into this country legally. But we need, Jeb, to build a wall, we need to keep illegals out.
Let’s be generous and assume Trump didn’t mean what he said in a literal sense. So, when he says immigration was not on anybody’s mind before his announcement, what he meant was that that despite the long, national debate about immigration over the past decade, little has been done to address the problem and its causes. Even with that benefit of the doubt, he didn’t provide any evidence of his claim that the Mexican government is sending rapists and murderers to the United States. It was simple and straightforward claim. So Wallace asked him again.
“Mr. Trump, I’ll give you 30 seconds — I’ll give you 30 seconds to answer my question, which was, what evidence do you have, specific evidence that the Mexican government is sending criminals across the border? Thirty seconds.”
“Border Patrol, I was at the border last week,” Trump responded. “Border Patrol, people that I deal with, that I talk to, they say this is what’s happening. Because our leaders are stupid. Our politicians are stupid. And the Mexican government is much smarter, much sharper, much more cunning. And they send the bad ones over because they don’t want to pay for them. They don’t want to take care of them. Why should they when the stupid leaders of the United States will do it for them? And that’s what is happening whether you like it or not.”
So, no evidence.
The second policy question Trump answered came from Bret Baier, who pointed out that Trump had previously favored a single-payer health care system for the United States and asked why Trump no longer supported such a change. In his answer, Trump embraced single-payer in theory and argued that government-controlled health care can work if it’s implemented properly.
Trump is at least partially correct. The ban on selling insurance across state lines is a clear barrier to competition and it’s long been a problem. Trump didn’t explain why he sees the absence of competition in health care as a problem in the United States and the solution in Canada. But beyond “great plans” in the private market and a “different system” for those who can’t afford insurance, Trump offered no details.
The third policy question also came from Baier. It involved what will likely be the most pressing problem to face the next U.S. president – the growing threat and increasing legitimacy of the world’s foremost sponsor of terror. Baier offered the candidates a helpful overview of developments before asking his question.
“Candidates, you may not have seen the late developing news today our Fox Pentagon team broke earlier this evening about a top Iranian general traveling to Moscow to meet with Russian President Vladimir Putin,” Baier said. “His name is General Qassem Soleimani. He’s blamed for hundreds of U.S. troops death in Iraq and Afghanistan. His trip to Russia appears to directly violate U.N. Security Council resolutions to confine him to Iran. So, Mr. Trump, if you were president, how would you respond to this?”
Well then. Even setting aside the Valley Girl beginning and the bizarre Iran-as-a-stock ending, Trump didn’t even attempt to answer the question in his series of jarring, nonsensical non-sequiturs.
Not a word on Soleimani’s provocative trip? On the danger presented by the fact that one of our ostensible partners on the Iran deal, Russia, is giving every indication that it’s no longer even pretending to be on our side? Or on the fact that Iran is already breaking sanctions?
So in his three policy answers last week, Trump offered no evidence to support his absurd claims about Mexican immigrants, he offered a qualified embrace of single-payer health care, and took political incoherence to levels not seen in recent memory.
And that’s the big point. Despite the claims of his supporters, Trump isn’t so much a departure from politics-as-usual as he is a sort of mutant, exaggerated version of it.
He does the same things they do, only bigger and more outrageously and, on occasion, more luxuriously. He flip-flops like an everyday politician and he whines like an everyday politician. He evades questions like everyday politicians and makes up statistics like everyday politicians. He uses strawmen like everyday politicians and misspeaks like everyday politicians. He craves media attention like everyday politicians and lies like everyday politicians.
Trump isn’t the solution to our broken politics so much as he’s the outsized avatar of it.
