By Scot Lehigh
SEPTEMBER 01, 2016
Talk about grading on the curve.
Trump supporters are now proudly proclaiming him presidential.
Because . . . because . . .
Well, because he managed a trip to Mexico without committing a major fox paw, as George Wallace used to call embarrassing utterances. And then came home to give a speech in Arizona that excited the Trumpkins.
C’mon, guys.
Remember the movie “Being There”? This was “Standing There.”
No, he didn’t insult Mexico or Mexicans to their face. But Trump did engage in a little of the truth-trimming that would drive conservatives bonkers if, say, done by a Clinton.
That, of course, came on the matter of whether he and the Mexican president, Enrique Peña Nieto, discussed who will pay for the Great Wall of Trump. Trump said “we didn’t discuss” that. But Peña Nieto later said he had told Trump Mexico wouldn’t pay for the project. So this is apparently a matter of what the real meaning of “discuss” is.
It sounds as though what happened is that the Mexican president stated his position up front, and the Republican presidential nominee kept his mouth shut. That was probably smart, given Trump’s various ill-considered ideas on how he might force that payment, though it hardly makes him seem like the blunt, tough, bend-the-world-to-his-will leader he has long styled himself. Still, if Hillary Clinton had engaged in that semantic hair-splitting, Fox News would have blown a fuse, and Congressmen Trey Gowdy and Jason Chaffetz would likely be standing on the Capitol steps calling for an investigation.
As for his Arizona speech, for all the sturm und drang, all the bluster, all the posture and posing, here’s one easy-to-miss thing that Trump did: He walked back his oft-repeated assertion that he would in short order deport all of the estimated 11 million illegal immigrants in this country. By The Washington Post’s estimate, he has now cut that to about six million.
That, of course, would still be a gargantuan, hugely expensive, logistically confounding undertaking. Still, it’s important to recognize what happened here: Under cover of all his political pyrotechnics, Trump retreated about halfway on his previous promise. I doubt his supporters will care, but the fact remains that they had their pockets picked during the primaries.
Trump’s speech also demonstrated the extent to which he lives in a world of his own devising, an alternative reality where truth and facts just don’t matter. Luckily, his campaign has created a virtual WPA project for fact-checkers, who are steadily catching up with the various misstatements, mistakes, and mendacities in Wednesday’s address. Again, this apparently doesn’t matter for many of his supporters. But for those who see a certain value in electing a president who has a basic grasp of reality and who feels constrained by the facts, it’s worth scrolling through what fact-checkers at the Associated Press and PolitiFact and Factcheck.org and NPR and The Washington Post say about Trump’s various assertions on immigration. (Hint: They aren’t inclined to grade on the curve.) And no, he and Hillary Clinton aren’t two peas in a political pod. She is not just as bad. Trump’s liberties with the truth make her seem like a piker.
Finally, there’s the issue of temperament.
If his appearance with President Peña Nieto represented the way Trump usually comports himself, there would indeed be some reason for optimism. But it isn’t. Voters have now seen enough and heard enough and read enough to know what the real Trump is like. He’s bullying, belligerent, and bombastic, demeaning, divisive, and demagogic. He’s not, in short, the kind of serious, mature, thoughtful, even-tempered leader that a great nation elects as its president.
He hasn’t changed. He won’t change. He can’t change.
He’s Donald Trump.
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