Making sense of Donald Trump
Ever since his announcement speech rally in Des Moines last June, I have been trying to make sense of what Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump says while answering questions from the media, or while giving one of his stump speeches. Following Trump’s train of thought can sometimes be like a dog chasing its tail: you know the thought is there, but where it ends and where it begins remains a mystery. After the front-runner’s very interesting and lively press availability before his Dubuque event on Tuesday night (where he threw out esteemed Latino journalist Jorge Ramos), I decided to transcribe word for word Trump’s answers to reporters’ questions. See if you can piece together a coherent thought.
A few weeks ago, Hillary Clinton introduced her college affordability plan. I’m curious what you have to say to your supporters of yours?
Trump: “We’re coming out with a plan in about four weeks, and I think it’s going to make people very, very happy. We have so many people, in going all over the country, I’ve been asked so many times by students, what are we going to do. And you know the ultimate answer is create jobs, because the biggest problem is that they have college debt, they have debt all over the place right up to their neck, and they come out and they can’t get a job in this country. Whether it’s China or Japan or Mexico, they’re all taking our jobs. And we need jobs in our country. It’s enough with what we’re doing with foreign trade. So I think that’s one of the reasons why we’re leading by so much in the polls because people know that I’m going to make good trade deals. It’s not going to be this horrible situation where we get nothing. You know if you think about China, they took our jobs, they took our money, they took our base, they took our manufacturing, and we owe them $1.4 trillion. How do you figure that? It’s like a magic act. We owe Japan the same amount. And we sell cars to them by the millions. And we owe them money. How do you figure that? So, we’re going to turn that around.”
Wait, what? How did Trump go from talking about student debt to ending up with making his notorious point of China and Japan essentially ruling the world and demanding money out of the U.S.? Sure, bringing back jobs to college students sort of connects back to the actual question as to what his response is to Hillary Clinton’s college affordability plan and what he plans to tell his supporters, but he breezed by that by saying, “We’re coming out with a plan in four weeks.” Trump should have simply ended his answer with that and moved on to the next question, but of course, he had to get his two cents in about China and Japan and Mexico.
This question is in regards to Governor Bush and his trip down to the US border in Texas. He says that your immigration plan is unrealistic, that it would cost too much money, that it’s not conservative, and he suggests that you read his book about immigration policy. I’m curious what you have to say?
Trump: I watched him, by the way, and he had a very small crowd. He had very little enthusiasm. He’s a very low-energy person, and we need a lot of energy to get this country turned around, including immigration. And the word immigration, and illegal immigration, you wouldn’t even be asking this question if it weren’t for me. Because when I came out and when I announced, I’m the one that started this thing. And I took a lot of flack the first two weeks, and now all of a sudden everyone’s apologizing to me. I mean, people in this room are apologizing to me because I brought something up that’s very, very serious. I brought up the crime….it’s a big problem. So you asked the question, Jeb Bush doesn’t even have a clue, doesn’t have a clue. And if I weren’t in this campaign, Jeb Bush would not be talking about illegal immigration. If you remember, he said they come as an act of love, ok? Tell that to the families, and there are many, many families, who lost a loved one. Act of love. There isn’t an act of love. It’s tough stuff, it’s real stuff, and it’s going to be taken care of. You know, a lot of the gangs you see in Ferguson and Baltimore and New York and Chicago, they’re illegal immigrants. They’re here illegally. And they’re rough dudes, they’re rough people. They’re going to be gone so fast, if I win, that your head will spin. Gone so fast, ok?”
Again, let’s break down the question into three parts: defend your immigration plan from Jeb Bush on the grounds that it is too expensive, not conservative enough, and unrealistic. Amazingly, Donald Trump manages to dodge every part of that question in his long-winded answer. Of course, he includes Bush zingers in his answer to add extra fuel to the already brash Bush-Trump feud, yet he never defends his immigration policy. He simply boasts himself for supposedly bringing the issue to the forefront of the election cycle (it would have inevitably been brought up anyway), and then begins to marginalize illegal immigrants as gang members and crime producers. Trump later back-pedaled and said that most illegal immigrants “are good people.” However, the front-runner did not entirely answer the question and again talked in circles around the main points he should have addressed.
I could go on and on into transcribing Donald Trump’s press conference before his Dubuque event, but this just gives you a taste of how he dances around each question and rarely ever makes a clear point on key issues. Rarely does he say anything substantial in terms of policies, yet his media availabilities are always worth attending, as he will inevitably say something demeaning or irrational toward another candidate or a random group of his liking for the day. Some voters I talked to after the major rally said that though they were impressed by Trump and agreed with some of the things he said, they acknowledged that he fails to go in-depth in many of the key issues such as Obamacare, foreign policy, national debt, and social security. They also observed that Trump has a large ego and regularly flaunts it, which they found off-putting. Both voters were retirees from Dubuque, and were independent voters.
While observing the 2,000-plus rally crowd from the mostly-Democratic city, I saw many voters become fidgety about halfway through Republican Donald Trump’s speech, again rambling and jumping from issue to issue without clearly connecting the dots. Maybe this is a sign of what’s in store for Trump among Iowans and the rest of the country? Maybe they are catching on that Trump could be “all talk” and have nothing substantial behind his flashy campaign. Is the summer of Trump officially over come the fall? We’ll see.
