President Trump is more comfortable in a tuxedo than half the journalists who rent them to celebrate the White House Correspondents’ dinner ever will be, but that’s never mattered.
While Washington’s movers and shakers sipped champagne in the Hilton on Saturday night, Trump was at the Pennsylvania Farm Show Complex & Expo Center, surrounded by enthusiastic supporters in jeans and baseball caps.
The contrast could not have been clearer.
For years and years, our presidents have donned the tux and sipped the wine and laughed along with the crowd composed almost entirely of people their constituents outside the Acela corridor do not trust.
To the person in a Milwaukee suburb or rural West Virginia who catches the headline on a local paper or a package on the nightly news, Trump’s decision to skip the dinner and head outside the Beltway will resonate.
The president knows an overarching narrative is more important to most Americans than the details that build it, so he goes big and invests in easy fixes.
Political nuance – like the apocalyptic parsing of this presidential administration’s every word – is not what registers with most Americans. Trump seems to understand this better than most in Washington. He is a master of painting in bold colors with broad strokes, knowing it’s more effective than the work of his detractors who obsess over detail.
The news consumption habits of most Americans are difficult for people in the media to relate to because we spend every day following every development in the news. But it’s like a professional musician watching American Idol or a chef eating at a five star restaurant. Drinking wine is a different experience for me than a sommelier. That isn’t to say nuance shouldn’t matter, but most people don’t have the energy for it.
The contrast Trump painted by skipping the WHCD for a farm expo center in Pennsylvania is clear and easy to digest. Most people will not hear about the impassioned defenses of a free press or the smug jokes about our unorthodox president, no matter how eloquent or funny they were. They won’t hear much about the speech Trump gave either.
They will see the split screen or the headline – him in a roaring crowd of middle Americans and them in gowns and tuxedoes – and that will be what matters.
Emily Jashinsky is a commentary writer for the Washington Examiner.
