After four years, it’s still difficult to separate the entertainer from the candidate/president.
Like many, we simply rolled our eyes when Donald Trump came down the escalator at the Trump Tower to announce his candidacy for president in 2015.
Ah, he has a new television show to tout or a hotel to build.
The insults Trump unleashed early on the campaign trail, even when combined with semi-serious policy pronouncements, hardly led one to believe the New York businessman and reality show host was serious about the run. Even when he began to collect the most primary votes, it seemed altogether possible he would end it, saying it was a stunt designed to display his popularity, his relativity or both.
Two years into his presidency, warts and all, we prefer him over his 2016 general election opponent and couldn’t imagine even one of the nearly dozen Democratic candidates for 2020 being better overall for the future of the United States.
But we’re still vexed at Trump’s penchant for meanness when unnecessary, and especially when mixed with words that make some Americans believe he puts more trust in a murderous dictator than he does in a valued trading partner.
We’re thinking specifically of his recent remarks during a news conference Monday in Tokyo when he scooped together North Korean leader Kim Jong Un and 2020 Democratic candidate Joe Biden in the same stream of consciousness thought.
“Kim Jong Un made a statement that Joe Biden is a low IQ individual,” Trump said. “He probably is, based on his record. I think I agree with him on that.”
The president needn’t have made such a statement about the former vice president and longtime United States senator. He’s obviously not a low IQ individual, whether or not you care for him as the 2020 Democratic presidential standard-bearer.
And, to our belief, Biden will take care of himself as a candidate. The far left, where the center of the party currently lies, wants anybody but him to be the nominee, even if he is far and away the current leader in the polls.
He’s also got too much baggage with a plagiarizing scandal in the 1980s, the vice presidential “hands-on” controversy that we think is much ado about nothing (although the far left doesn’t) and, as other Republicans have pointed out, simply being wrong on the issues through the years.
With Trump, we assume his comments are coming from the entertainer who always who wants to be relevant. Biden’s the Democratic candidate de jour, so he needs to make a comment about him to let the people know he knows of the threat. But even if the remark is coming from the entertainer Trump, it’s still not becoming of the president Trump to make it.
On the other hand, while some critics may have chalked it up to the entertainer and not the president the remarks he made about not being bothered by recent North Korean missile tests, we believe those words were not made blithely.
Instead, we think this is Trump wanting to believe his face-to-face meetings with Kim have had an impact, even if we don’t see the desired results until down the road. He, after all, did what previous presidents would not do – actually go and talk in person with the North Korean leader.
Democrats and pundits ridiculed him for thinking he could do it, and then his meetings led to serious discussions between the two Koreas and with the United States about easing tensions and denuclearization.
As long as the U.S. keeps economic pressure on the country and plans for any eventuality involving its actions, we don’t see a problem in Trump remaining optimistic about Kim eventually coming around to his point of view.
At this time, it just so happened his reaction to the recent missile tests wasn’t the same as that of Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, one of the people he went across the Pacific Ocean to see. Abe called those tests “quite a regrettable act.”
Trump, as much as we might prefer differently, is not going to quit with the childish put-downs, with being the entertainer. Columnists can declare, as one did this week, they will stop repeating the nicknames the president has given to some of his opponents. And reports can suggest, as one did this week, the impact of his tweeting has declined (as measured by retweets and “likes”) since he first became president.
But as long as his supporters and especially his critics pay attention (and they will), he’ll keep it up.
We just wish it were a little easier to separate the entertainer’s remarks with those of a president, who, though often unconventionally, is trying to shape policy in ways that may be different from his predecessors but that nevertheless attempts to put the country first.