Donald Trump: America’s First Inverted Reality (TV) President
Wednesday, November 16th, 2016
By Reed Galen
Welcome to the American Singularity.
Last week American voters let the world know they wanted something different. Based on Donald Trump’s first week as President-Elect, it looks like they’re going to get more than their fair share of change. Having pulled off the most improbable win since Harry Truman’s upset of Thomas Dewey in 1948, the President-Elect is running his transition a lot like he ran his campaign; surrounded by a small, hyper-loyal coterie of aides for whom defense of the Alpha is first, last and always. The Trump Transition team is, by many accounts, as shambolic as his political effort was, either unable or unwilling to abide by even the mildest traditional tenets of how Presidential transfers of power occur. Many of us who’ve worked in the White House or in official DC (for either party) or in the political media are, for whatever reason, still surprised by Trump’s differences and deviations from the norm. We shouldn’t be.
It’s A Family Affair
If Hillary Clinton had won the election last week, it is almost assured that Chelsea Clinton and her family would have left New York City for the friendly confines of the Federal District. For the Clintons, politics is a family business. Conservative outlets, pundits and officialdom might have moaned and wailed about the inappropriateness of Chelsea’s involvement, but it would likely have been seen as the natural evolution for an individual (Hillary) for whom trust is a precious and rarely offered thing.
Donald Trump is no different with his children, even if their businesses, before July 2015, was real estate and reality television. However, their ham-handed requests for Trump’s grown children to receive Top Secret clearances reinforces what perhaps should be most worrisome of all: The President-Elect is a mercurial, probably lonely person, for whom only blood is thick enough to trust with the highest counsel — regardless of the issue or venue. The Borgias have come to Washington.
His closest advisor and confident is his daughter, Ivanka, a successful businessperson in her own right. She and her husband, Jared Kushner (quickly becoming the new administration’s Keyser Soze) , held enormous sway over the operations of the campaign, and it will likely do the same in the West Wing. Far from the latest hotel ribbon cutting or reality show taping, the Trumps will find that there is a reason why so many presidents take office with dark hair and leave with gray (insert all your hair jokes here.) There are innumerable issues that occupy a White House and they never, ever stop. Whether Trump is in Washington, New York or playing golf in Scotland, he is the President of the United States. The 3 am phone calls are real now; will Trump rely on the advice of his military commanders in a crisis, or will he ask Ivanka, Eric and Don Jr what to do next?
“To be in power, you didn’t need guns, or money or even numbers you just needed the will to do what the other guy wouldn’t.”
Aside from the basic oddity of having a presidential son in-law receive such clearance and apparently desire to sit in on the President’s Daily Brief, in which the CIA delivers the most up-to-date intelligence on events around the world, Kushner, like Steve Bannon, owns and runs a media outlet of his own. Putting aside Kushner’s lack of any relevant experience to be privy to such information as is included in the PDB, that he governs how the Observer covers the world, it’s hard to imagine, even by osmosis, how information Kushner receives each morning wouldn’t somehow tangentially appear in his own pages or those of Bannon’s Breitbart, when it suits their interests.
Minding the Store
The White House has several hundred jobs that must be filled or designated before the new president takes office at noon on January 20th, 2017. The administration itself — the scores of cabinet departs, sub-agencies, boards and commissions require thousands of bodies to fill them — upwards of 5,000. Given the very small nature of the Trump campaign, it’s hard to see how he fills out either pool very quickly, and maybe he doesn’t care. The President-Elect clearly keeps his own counsel and likes to make all decisions on his own. Knowing that, does the Trump White House really need an extra half-dozen junior squirrels in the Office of Management and Budget or a couple of extra hands in Intergovernmental Affairs? Trump personally could probably not care less about those offices or the jobs within them. They are small ball — tiny cogs in a very large machine.
The Republican National Committee has dozens of young, talented staffers. With Reince Preibus being designated as the next White House Chief of Staff, he’d do well to bring as many of them as he could to perform the core political and media functions at the very least; they know Washington, have probably been, even at a very junior level, staff at the Capitol or previous White House, and would provide some small modicum of professionalism to the outward facing pieces of a Trump administration. However, the Deputy National Security Advisor for South Asian Affairs — that job will go unfilled for months, if not years.
There is something to be said for individuals with relevant policy experience sliding into jobs in various agencies. This is a time-honored tradition in Washington. Go there as a young person in a new administration, spend your eight years learning an issue, lobby or go to the Hill while your party is out of the White House, and then prepare to be reinserted into the Matrix when a Republican comes back to town. Press reports illustrate the Trump Transition’s attitude toward those that opposed him: “NeverTrumpers Need Not Apply.”
This isn’t too surprising. Three different Trump surrogates announced that they had in fact started their own “enemies” list and the thousands of Schedule C appointments (the last vestige of the spoils system) are typically reserved for those who helped on the campaign in ways large and small; that they are now rejecting many entreaties from Washington’s army of political cicadas is not a surprise, nor unexpected.
24/7 Media’s Next Paradigm
When considering RNC Chairman Reince Priebus for the Chief of Staff position, the President-Elected noted, among other things, that Priebus is “good on TV.” Knowing Trump’s mastery of all things media — Priebus may be the first person hired in a senior position because of their ability to speak complete sentences on the magic box, but he will be far from the last. Given that Trump’s campaign was constantly pushing the boundaries of how the political and national press cover him, when he takes office in January, the new chief executive will make the Obama Administration’s outreach look old-fashioned by comparison.
Imagine, if you will, a world in which dozens of senior White House staffers are offered up for interviews on a daily basis. The cable nets would almost assuredly take them — everyday of the week. We could see a dozen or more senior White House appointees who hold a lofty title, say Director of External and Strategic Affairs, but their job is really to be on television, radio or the Internet on a daily basis pushing Trump. The media will have to watch. Trump will have again owned the airwaves.
Not to be content with just Fox News, CNN and MSNBC covering their words, we should expect to see a daily edition of Trump White House Facebook Live. Instead of being filmed in the lobby of Trump Tower (though who the hell knows, it might be) they set up the camera in the Roosevelt Room, the Indian Treaty Room, or on special occasions, the Oval Office itself. Millions of citizens would watch. The media would have to watch. Trump will have again owned social media.
As noted above, President-Elect Trump will have not one, but two personal outlets by which to convey his message directly to those who want their news from the White House but without the filter of the crooked mainstream media. Both Breitbart and Kushner’s Observer could serve, as one writer noted this week, as the Washington Times did for Ronald Reagan in the ’80s. They could be used as places to float new ideas or positions in a comparatively safe space. They will almost certainly be used to take to task anyone in Washington who crosses the new president’s path or holds up his plans to Make America Great Again. The media will have to watch. Trump will have again owned cyberspace.
Among the other bits of news coming out of Week One of Trump’s America, is the idea the the President-Elect may continue to do political rallies across the country. For someone as obsessed with their own image and self-aggrandizement as Trump, this is not at all surprising. Also, it is hard to see how a President Trump would ever be up for traveling to a small business in Des Moines to do a roundtable and town hall event as so many presidents before him have done, to push a specific policy proposal in a favored or important Congressional District or media market. Instead he will go to Dallas and host 25,000 screaming fans. The media will have to watch. Trump will have again owned the day’s news cycle.
Empty Press Pools
Speaking of the media, who are as shell-shocked as so many of us were by Trump’s unlikely victory, last night they got their first taste of how Trump is likely to treat them in office. Yesterday evening, Trump spokesperson informed the traveling press pool (the small group of reporters that cover the President around the clock) that there was a “lid” for the day; that is — no more public activity or news would be made for the day. Citing a desire for privacy, President Elect-Trump and Company headed out to the 21 Club, the bastion of working class America, for a celebratory steak dinner. If your job is to cover the next President of the United States, not only did they leave you behind, but they lied to you; the latter ultimately being far worse than the former.
Trump doesn’t like the press corps — as evidenced by the dozens of times he incited his fans to catcall and boo at assembled reporters during campaign events. But part of the Trump-Bannon media genius is that they have helped de-legitimize the press with half the country (which really didn’t like the mainstream media before Trump came along) and convince Trump voters that the reporters are just out to get him. As Jack Shafer writes in Politico Magazine, “…he [Trump] needs a visible foil, and until an individual comes along to absorb his five minutes of hate, the press will be a fine substitute.”
Covering the Trump White House will be the most difficult political assignment most of the press corps has during their careers. While Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama may have disdained media coverage for their own reasons, President-Elect Trump is openly hostile to them. If there is a silver lining for the members of the Fourth Estate camped out in the White House Briefing Room (do you think they’ll bring tours through to jeer and boo at them?) is that Trump-World is as leaky as a sieve — someone is always talking out of school, trying to save their own hide, or twisting the knife in an opponent.
After All This, What Difference Does It Make?
Many of those that were so, so very wrong in our predictions last week have allowed our internal pendula to swing all the way back to the “completely unsure of ourselves” side. Now, instead of just moaning and wailing about the incongruity of Trump’s transition, we are also quick to note that most of the Americans who voted for Trump, really don’t care about the minutiae that makes up a presidential transition or that the protective pool van was left idling in front of Trump Tower last night. Those that voted for such radical change, for such a drastic difference in how Washington and the White House would operate, may well see this as the natural progression of a candidate who has not, is not and will not do anything like his predecessors.
If the system is rigged and broken, why should Trump or his team do anything to sustain said apparatus when they were elected specifically to at best dismantle it and and worst burn it to the ground. These are all reasonable, if not encouraging, emotions on the part of the 50% of the country who demanded change last week. That does not mean the press, official Washington, or the punditry should allow the next occupant of the White House to plunge the country into chaos just because he wants to.
Author’s Note: After my enormous miss on the election results last week I received a note from an old friend admonishing me for my opposition to the President-Elect, my reasoning behind his victory and that I was just another member of the elite who missed everything about why voters pulled the lever for Trump. I stand behind both my opposition and my reasoning but the last criticism contains no small amount of truth.
I responded to my friend saying that Donald Trump is duly-elected next leader of this country and I have the utmost respect for that result. And on a daily basis, I hope that Mr. Trump understands the gravity of the post to which he’s been elected. I will pray that he upholds the laws and tenets of his office. But I remain skeptical; it is incumbent upon our next President to prove that he is worthy of the job. Following Ronald Reagan’s advice, I will take the “trust, but verify” approach to the incoming administration.
Copyright, 2016. Jedburghs, LLC.
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