There are a few things that are particularly useful to remember about former president Donald Trump.<\/p>\n
One is that he operates under the assumption that he can simply talk his way out of any situation. It\u2019s likely that this stems from his career as a salesperson: that he learned to say whatever he needed to close a deal \u2014 and then to say whatever he needed to clean up the mess from the promises he made at the outset.<\/p>\n
Another is that he internalizes sales pitches that work. Like many salespeople, he develops a patter, a series of phrases and pitches. Those lines come out spontaneously and effortlessly, to the point that he has often winnowed them down to just their most basic elements. Instead of saying that President Joe Biden\u2019s administration was unsuccessful for various reasons, he just says things like, \u201cAmerica is a failing country.\u201d<\/p>\n
A third thing to remember about Trump is that the sell he\u2019s working on now isn\u2019t focused on votes. That\u2019s ancillary, the way that securing agreements to use the name \u201cTrump\u201d for marketing was ancillary. What he\u2019s aiming for instead is applause and approval. During his speeches, that\u2019s what he\u2019s trying to achieve. That\u2019s what his riffs are aimed at. He\u2019s building a voter base the way he built a market, by getting people to approve of him. This is why he tracks crowd size so closely.<\/p>\n
On Thursday, his push to be elected for a second term as president brought him to the Economic Club of New York. The organization prides itself on its sober, informed assessments of the economic and political worlds, meaning that Trump was already somewhat disadvantaged. His politics are not predicated on his grasp of policy but on appeals to the politically disaffected. His descriptions of how things are working are much more effective with people who don\u2019t know how things work.<\/p>\n
But the question that tripped him up, the one that launched a thousand criticisms and not a few memes, was one focused on something that he should theoretically have had a grasp on: child care.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf you win in November,\u201d a panelist asked, \u201ccan you commit to prioritizing legislation to make child care affordable and if so, what specific piece of legislation will you advance?\u201d<\/p>\n
Here is Trump\u2019s entire answer, verbatim.<\/p>\n
Particularly when removed from the context of the rest of his comments, the response reads like gibberish. A few days after his running mate mocked Vice President Kamala Harris by comparing her to the fumbling, desperate answer of a pageant contestant back in 2007, Trump offered a much more convincing re-creation.<\/p>\n
The media does admittedly often polish Trump\u2019s claims in a way that obscures the circuity of the route he took to get there. In this case, though, it\u2019s useful to establish at the outset what he was trying to say, in part because it helps explain how he ended up taking this particular path and in part because it doesn\u2019t serve as much more of an endorsement.<\/p>\n
This was the last question Trump answered at the event, one in which he was focused centrally on making the case for his economic policies. Those policies were delineated during his prepared remarks and focused heavily on the use of tariffs. So what he ended up saying, in essence, was that he was going to generate so much money from policies like tariffs \u2014 price increases that disproportionately came out of Americans\u2019 pockets \u2014 that paying for child care would be easy.<\/p>\n
But, at the outset, he clearly didn\u2019t know what he was going to say. He had suddenly been thrust into a dark, smoke-filled room and had to find the exit.<\/p>\n
He started a few times.<\/p>\n
\u201cWell, I would do that, and we\u2019re sitting down,\u201d he began, likely preparing to claim (as he so often does) that a specific policy was being prepared and would be produced within a few weeks (as he so rarely does).<\/p>\n
But then he appears to have remembered that this was something he had actually talked about with people (or seen people talking about it on TV). Like his daughter and, perhaps, Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), who introduced legislation on child care earlier this year.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou know,\u201d he transitioned, \u201cI was, uh, somebody, we had Senator Marco Rubio, and my daughter Ivanka was so, uh, impactful on that issue.\u201d<\/p>\n
It wasn\u2019t going well. And when Trump is scrambling for an exit, his instinct is to find one from which he can hear the muffled sounds of applause emanating.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s a very important issue,\u201d he told the questioner. He was starting over, looking to build a rapport. He continued down that path, fumbling through the dark.<\/p>\n
\u201cBut I think when you talk about the kind of numbers that I\u2019m talking about, that \u2014 because child care is child care,\u201d he said. \u2018It\u2019s, couldn\u2019t \u2014 you know, it\u2019s something, you have to have it. In this country, you have to have it.\u201d<\/p>\n
You can see him figuring out what he\u2019s going to say even as he is patting the questioner on the head.<\/p>\n
\u201cBut when you talk about those numbers compared to the kind of numbers that I\u2019m talking about by taxing foreign nations at levels that they\u2019re not used to but they\u2019ll get used to it very quickly,\u201d he continued. \u201cAnd it\u2019s not going to stop them from doing business with us, but they\u2019ll have a very substantial tax when they send product into our country.\u201d<\/p>\n
This is the patter kicking in. He\u2019s going to tax the foreign manufacturers at levels they\u2019ve never seen before! He\u2019s going to fix our problems with One Simple Trick.<\/p>\n
But then, it seems, he realized that he was drifting away from the actual question, which asked for a specific policy. So he wound back to that.<\/p>\n
\u201cThose numbers are so much bigger than any numbers that we\u2019re talking about, including child care, that it\u2019s gonna take care. We\u2019re gonna have \u2014 I, I look forward to having no deficits within a fairly short period of time,\u201d he said. \u201cCoupled with, uh, the reductions that I told you about on waste and fraud and all of the other things that are going on in our country\u2014\u201d<\/p>\n
This is a reference to his earlier promise to put Elon Musk in charge of a commission that would find the places where the government was wasting at least a third of the money it spent. This is \u2026 an overestimate of how much spending is wasted. But Trump was looping back to more comfortable, better-worn terrain closer to the overall thrust of his speech.<\/p>\n
\u201cBecause I have to say with child care, I want to stay with child care,\u201d he continued, \u201cbut those numbers are small relative to the kind of economic numbers that I\u2019m talking about, including growth.\u201d He riffed on this a little more.<\/p>\n
That was the answer, though: that this unrealistic promise of eliminating the deficit by increasing tariffs (and, by extension, costs for Americans) and uprooting trillions of dollars in wasteful or fraudulent spending would leave the country\u2019s coffers so flush that he would pay for child care. Which is certainly what his party would want to prioritize over tax cuts, right?<\/p>\n
Anyway, Trump finally found the door, closing out his answer the way he likes to conclude his rallies.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re going to make this into an incredible country that can afford to take care of its people, and then we\u2019ll worry about the rest of the world. Let\u2019s help other people. But we\u2019re gonna take care of our country first,\u201d he said. \u201cThis is about America first. It\u2019s about: Make America great again.\u201d<\/p>\n
The audience applauded.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe have to do it, because right now we\u2019re a failing nation,\u201d Trump concluded, with almost palpable relief. \u201cSo we\u2019ll take care of it. Thank you. Very good question.\u201d<\/p>\n
And that was that. Sale made \u2014 if only in the room and only for a moment.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
There are a few things that are particularly useful to remember about former president Donald Trump. One is that he operates under the assumption that he can simply talk his way out of any situation. It\u2019s likely that this stems from his career as a salesperson: that he learned to say whatever he needed to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":9116,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9115","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9115","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9115"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9115\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/9116"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9115"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9115"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9115"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}