We are well past taking any words that come out of Donald Trump’s mouth as a sign of comprehension, sincerity, or anything else other than reflexive emission of gas in the presence of a microphone.
However, in an interview with AP’s Julie Pace on Friday, before rambling off into another self-serving exaggeration, Trump managed to string together words that more sincere observers may use to rebut the notion that we should run government like a business… or at least like Donald Trump appears to run a business:
AP: You’ve talked a little bit about the way that you’ve brought some business skills into the office. Is there anything from your business background that just doesn’t translate into the presidency, that just simply is not applicable to this job?
TRUMP: Well in business, you don’t necessarily need heart, whereas here, almost everything affects people. So if you’re talking about health care — you have health care in business but you’re trying to just negotiate a good price on health care, et cetera, et cetera. You’re providing health. This is (unintelligible). Here, everything, pretty much everything you do in government, involves heart, whereas in business, most things don’t involve heart.
AP: What’s that switch been like for you?
TRUMP: In fact, in business you’re actually better off without it.
AP: What’s making that switch been like for you?
TRUMP: You have to love people. And if you love people, such a big responsibility. (unintelligible) You can take any single thing, including even taxes. I mean we’re going to be doing major tax reform. Here’s part of your story, it’s going to be a big (unintelligible). Everybody’s saying, “Oh, he’s delaying.” I’m not delaying anything. I’ll tell you the other thing is (unintelligible). I used to get great press. I get the worst press. I get such dishonest reporting with the media. That’s another thing that really has — I’ve never had anything like it before. It happened during the primaries, and I said, you know, when I won, I said, “Well the one thing good is now I’ll get good press.” And it got worse. (unintelligible) So that was one thing that a little bit of a surprise to me. I thought the press would become better, and it actually, in my opinion, got more nasty [“Transcript of AP Interview with Trump,” AP, interview 2017.04.21, posted 2017.04.24].
I agree that government requires heart… perhaps better translatable as a sense of obligation to all citizens and, in the case of a nation as powerful as the United States, obligation to all humanity. But does Trump really believe that “almost everything affects people” is true only in government and not in business? Does he really think that the actions businesses (telecoms, banks, homebuilders…) take after he deregulates them won’t affect people? If Trump really believes that, he’s not only heartless but clueless.
But that assumes Trump means any of the words tumbling out of his mouth, a proposition that is sketchy at best.
p.s.: In other cluelessness, Trump tells AP that “The wall will stop the drugs“—all of them, apparently, even though a lot of drugs enter the United States by boat and through those big holes in the current fence called checkpoints.
Funny thing is, I did not know that synthetic heroin was smuggled in from Mexico. “The Charleston Gazette-Mail had to sue to get this information from the state government.
Out-of-state drug companies….
Sell NINE MILLION pills in 2 years….
To ONE pharmacy…
In a town whose population is 392. No bells went off, no red flags flown.
And the question is not why 1,728 West Virginians died of Oxy overdose in six years, nor is it why so FEW died.
The question is how do drug companies get away with it, and the answer is money.”
trump should put a wall around the pharma industry.
With all that business experience, he still had to learn what it would be like to be president. He had been friends of the Clintons when they were in the white House, so he has no excuse. He did not know healthcare was complicated, but he knew the war better than the generals. Will he ever learn.
What Trump is REALLY Saying … “First hundred days? I failed. But it’s the media’s fault for telling the voters about it. If they’d shut-up I could pull off this con job.”
The Wall, is only in South Dakota on the interstate. trump’s farce is gone like the lie it has always been. Suck it up republicans, your boy is batting at 100% failure. Now, Sonny Perdue or Perdon’t is in charge of agriculture. Sworn in today. I am sure you all feel better already.
Yesterday President Obama made his first public appearance in Chicago speaking to students about leadership. It was so refreshing to hear a president that can string together perfect sentences.
Trump is headed for another political failure before his hundred days are up, Democrats and republican congressional leaders are not supporting funding for his Mexican wall and forcing him to scuttle the project ahead of a looming government shutdown.
And, adding insult to injury, congress will not renew the healthcare debate.
This was a “come-to-savior (of choice)” moment I knew would eventually hit. When electing a businessman with no real public service experience who promised to surround himself and fill government positions with others who are the “smartest, best people” (also devoid of public service experience), the very purpose of government would be called to question. For Trump, government is the external bureaucracy that needed to be tamed – the Reagan view of Government to the nth degree.
Business at its root is about exploitation of resources for the profit of the owner. Consumers are a resource to use for profit. (Citizens are not.) So much of the conflict of interest of the Trump administration flows from this basic interpretation of the role of the leader – to use every opportunity for profit. Businesses are “good” to their customers only as far as it perpetuates the business’ ability to keep the income flowing from those customers.
Government has to be “we the people.” Government is the application of the societal good that individuals cannot attain alone. Government is public service. Leadership in government does not require business skills; that is what middle-managers are for. Leadership in government requires the view of something beyond the “self.”
As the most defining issue of our time, income/wealth inequality; business celebrates the redistribution to the 1%; government SHOULD be fighting it at every turn.
Porter —– PERFECT
Trump took another hit today from a federal judge that blocked his attempt to stop funding to sanctuary cities.
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/judge-halts-trump-order-pressure-sanctuary-cities
It seems a large part of this administration’s legal failures is the failure of the bogus potus and his perjurer AG to keep their mouths shut.
Its seems we ARE (as predicted here previously) in fact witnessing the implosion of the GOP (GRAND OLD PARTY OF CHRISIS). Something we wondered re-election, but now despite trump’s largely shocking electoral victory, April 24 NPR reports support this. Politico
Next, Trump prepares for war, 100 days out, with North Korea. Remember republican’s weak president GW Bush proclaimed the axis of evil: Iraq, Iran and North Korea. Bush was kept in office by the 2000 Bush V. Gore supreme court halting FLA vote counting despite FLA supreme court rulings to the contrary. will get back to this
“o”-your above post is so ‘right on’; perfect …