Inside Trump’s Mind
This interview was conducted on April 21st 2017 by Julie Pace. Link is above if you wish to read the whole thing.
This interview just really shows me how Trump’s mind really works. It actually is quite fascinating. Not sure if I mean that in a good way or a bad way. His responses just make my mouth stay open for a bit. Would I call his replies absurd, laughable, naive, or restrained? I have no idea. And that confusion of mine is what is spellbinding about this man; the 45th President of the United States.
First lets talk about how he really does have a point with the media being skewed sometimes and the deliberate intent of making him look bad. When asked about the refusal of the handshake of German Chancellor Angela Merkel during their photo op, he says that he never heard the person in the crowd ask for it and even if he did there would be no significance because they had shaken hands at least four times beforehand. I will give the President the benefit of the doubt. If this is true then the traditional liberal media of course are not providing context and are giving the President the short end of the stick.
Then Donald goes on and in my view basically brags about this one ‘deal’ he made in lowering the governments overall bill for some 90 F-35 fighter jets. He says he saved $725 million for them. And this is part of a bigger order of a total of 3,000 planes. He says he went back in forth between calls to Lockheed and Boeing (two of the biggest defense companies) until he got a lower price. He mentions how Defense Secretary Mattis was impressed by the result saying “I’ve never seen anything like this in my life.” And when asked if he expects the same savings for the rest of the order the President expected more savings down the line.
When asked about how in the campaign he promised a particular 100 day plan he starts making an excuse for himself like a common politician even though during the campaign he was adamant about pursuing to make sweeping changes for the first 100 days. He acknowledges now that a president has to have flexibility. He gives the example of how he needs to work with the Chinese in order to contain North Korea even though he has accused the Chinese government of currency manipulation of the yuan. And as a side note he believes that the accusation is irrelevant now because he says the government has not manipulated its currency ever since he took office.
When asked what has changed him about his new job, Trump surprises me and says that he is stunned by the grandness of it all. He is taken aback by the fact that the decisions made affect millions. He says everything takes heart which he juxtaposes to business in which he says, “most things don’t involve heart.” And one more thing that I’m skipping ahead to is the fact that he no longer listens to the media that opposes him. He said he used to watch CNN but not anymore since becoming President because all they do is bash on him and so that brings negativity to his outlook.
Another thing that I’m just so concerned of is his naivete. The fact that he admits that he did not know much about NATO back when he was asked by Wolf Blitzer. He just kind of made guesses which he later still reinforced because it turned out he agreed with his original uninformed opinion. Back then he basically said NATO was obsolete and that they are not combating terrorism and are not putting their ‘fair’ share of financial resources to the project.
Julie asked about what message he wants to send the dreamers. He tells her that he wants them to rest easy. His government is not after them but are after criminals that are violent who are rampaging cities. He specifically mentions the Salvadoran gang, MS-13, “They are a bad group, and somebody said they are as bad as Al-Qaida, which is a hell of a reference.” Regardless he still believes that he needs to address the long term issue of immigration which certainly involves dreamers.
The interview covers a lot more stuff including the market economy, Julian Assange, NAFTA, etc. I just wanted to point out the stuff that spoke to me. And of course something that was laid throughout the interview was Trump’s constant need to brag, to get praise for, to essentially show off. Now I’m not opposed to someone being cocky but the president to me seems like a little boy constantly in need of attention and affection. He brags how when he was on air on Chris Wallace’s show that it had 9.2 million people watching and how the ratings are sky high when he has gone on other talk shows. It just makes you want to roll your eyes and ask, “Are we back in high school?”
