President Trump has a history of making big—very, very major—promises. No surprise there. If there’s any professional class more prone to exaggerated promises than politicians, it’s real estate developers. Last year, the Upshot tried to compile a list of things Trump promised would happen “soon” and it’s . . . well, it’s really something.
It’s one thing to promise to overhaul Obamacare or cut taxes. All politicians do that. But Trump also has one move that no other president in modern times has deployed: He teases his announcements, promising us the imminent arrival of a new promise. His Monday tweet that there was a big announcement coming about the Iran deal on Tuesday at 2:00 p.m. is a promise that he’s that he’s going to make some news. Why else would he tease it ahead of time? The only reason is to gin up interest. Otherwise, if he’s already made his decision then why not just announce it now? Gotta win those ratings wars, I guess.
We’ve seen this before. Take, for example, March 8, 2018. That’s when Trump teased that he had a big announcement coming about North Korea later that night. And it was! The White House revealed (and then walked back) (and then walked forward) that Trump was going to meet with North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un.
But Trump’s news teasers don’t always deliver the goods.
Remember when Trump teased that he might have tapes of Jim Comey, that he might release “maybe sometime in the very near future.” And then . . . nothing.
Sometimes he delivers nothing, and then sometimes he delivers a little something. On March 15, 2017, Trump told an audience in Detroit that he was going to announce something “Very, very big. Very important. Everybody is saying, ‘What is it?’ Let’s keep them guessing back there.’” The super-duper big news was tariffs. (No, not those tariffs. Those tariffs.)
On April 21, 2017, Trump promised a “big announcement” on tax cuts. The big reveal amounted to a one-page handout detailing lowered tax brackets.
On August 3, 2017, Trump claimed he had a “big announcement” to make at a rally in West Virginia. The story was that Democratic governor Jim Justice was switching parties.
On November 12, 2017, Trump promised a “major announcement” following his Asia trip. The announcement turned out to be a speech in which he proclaimed that the trip had been “a tremendous success.”
It’s all just SOP for Trump. During the campaign, he promised a “big announcement” February 26, 2016. (Whatever that announcement turned out to be, it seems to have been lost to the mists of time.)
And back in 2012 he was peddling big announcements, too. On October 19, 2012, he wrote on Facebook, “’ll be making a major announcement on President Obama next week–stay tuned!” This was an extended bit of carnival barking and the Daily News was there to write it up:
Michael Cohen, who serves as special counsel to The Apprentice host, declined to shed any more light on the announcement, saying only that it would be “very big.”
Trump’s “big announcement” turned out to be an offer to donate $5 million to charity if Obama released his college transcripts and applications (and his passport records and applications). No one took Trump up on the offer and no $5 million was ever paid.
But maybe Trump did deliver on the part about changing the election. On the day Trump made his announcement, Mitt Romney led Obama in the RealClearPolitics poll average, 47.8 percent to 47.2 percent. Just a few days later, President Obama pulled off a 5-point victory. Promises made, promises kept!
Of course, even Trump’s Obama teaser announcement eventually got its own subsequent teaser announcement. Almost exactly four years later, Trump teased that he had another “big announcement” about Obama’s provenance. This time, the announcement came in the form of a speech in which Trump announced that “President Barack Obama was born in the United States.”
But the truth is, you shouldn’t blame Trump for acting like a huckster instead of a president. He’ll stop doing these teases when people stop paying attention to them.
