Trump in Two Tones

President Trump can go both ways. On February 24, he delivered a wild-and-woolly speech brimming with populist anger to the Conservative Political Action Conference. Four days later, he addressed a joint session of Congress in statesmanlike fashion and called for national unity and bipartisanship.

The conventional wisdom in Washington is that Trump is politically bipolar. He shows very different sides of his political thinking depending on which adviser influences him. Adviser Steve Bannon’s unfettered populism shaped the CPAC speech and even a bit of the talk to Congress. His daughter Ivanka and her husband Jared Kushner, the moderate couple, had a bigger role in his milder words to the joint session.