Donald Trump Awkwardly Avoids Questions
Donald Trump, the front-runner of the Republican party, has charmed many Americans with his charisma. He has capitalized on the media, making sure that his opinions are heard everywhere. Often his speech is informal and shocking, which is why his supporters praise his lack of “political correctness.” Although Trump seems to be the ultimate “outsider” candidate that is so fashionable now, he attempts to fit in with a technique that many tpeople associate with politicians — avoiding questions.
In July at the World Trade Bridge in Laredo, TX, Trump spoke to a crowd of reporters. The New York Times asked him “Have you seen any evidence here to confirm your fears about Mexico sending its criminals across the border?”
Trump answered “Yes, I have, and I’ve heard it, and I’ve heard it from a lot of different people.”
“What evidence, specifically, have you seen?” You would think that this would provoke some sort of story, or at least a reference to the “different people” who Trump claims to have heard complaints from.
“We’ll be showing you the evidence.”
“When?”
Apparently he had no answer for that last question.
On an episode of The Late Show in September, Stephen Colbert asked Trump a question that he warned was a big “meatball” of a question: Was Barack Obama born in the United States? In the time leading up to that interview, Trump had been calling the validity of Obama’s “natural born citizenship” into question. He quite blatantly refused to answer the question.
“You wanna know? I don’t talk about it anymore.” Trump said after Colbert continued to describe the size of the meatball. “I talk about jobs, I talk about our veterans being horribly mistreated, I just don’t discuss that.”
Avoiding tough questions is something all politicians should know how to do, but Trump’s style has the same lack of subtlety as the rest of his campaign.
In Claremont on January 5th, Trump received his first question of the night, which asked if Trump would bar women from serving in the infantry. Trump answered “Isn’t that a wonderful first question,” and then asked the crowd to tell him what they thought with a show of hands.
He could not provide a specific assessment of the show of hands, saying “So it’s a little bit of a mix, and a lot of people are undecided. What?”
Trump is clearly still busy garnering media attention. On Monday, he was interviewed by “himself” on the Tonight Show, “himself” being Jimmy Fallon in a wig.
“How are you gonna create jobs in this country?” Fallon asked Trump.
“I’m just gonna do it.”
“Right… Right… but how?”
“By doing it. It just happens.” Trump enlightened viewers. If only previous administrations had demonstrated this expertise.
Fallon then asked Trump something that many people have been wondering about.
“Next question: You said that you’d get Mexico to build a wall at the border, how do you plan to do that?”
“Well,” Trump began. “Since I’m you, why don’t you tell me?”
Fallon then laid out a brilliant strategy to challenge Mexico to a giant game of Jenga, make them set up, and then decide he didn’t want to play anymore. Trump did nothing to challenge this strategy.
Obviously, Jimmy Fallon dressed as Trump interviewing himself is not the most serious campaigning opportunity, but the fact remains that Trump did not take those opportunities to provide information on his policies regarding those issues. He did however, provide an interesting clip for the Tonight Show.
The very core of Trump’s charisma is perhaps how informal his speech is, but where most politicians try to hide their non-answers with long, beautifully-crafted sentences, he keeps his lack of an answer glaringly obvious.
