CNN/Media has an implicit question that’s easy to answer:
President Trump’s year of flouting presidential traditions and trashing the media isn’t quite over yet.
Trump left the White House on Friday without holding an end-of-the-year press conference.
While it’s by no means a requirement to do so, most presidents in modern times have chosen to hold a formal news conference in December to tout accomplishments and share seasons greetings before Christmas.
This is the first time in 15 years that a president has opted not to.
CNN’s Jeff Zeleny reported that Trump “wanted to hold a news conference, but aides prevailed on him not to.”
So let’s tout up his accomplishments:
- Nomination and confirmation of Neil Gorsuch to SCOTUS. Note that Gorsuch qualifies for the denominative “IJ,” or Illegitimate Justice, but this is Trump’s fault only in part, as while it is true he publicly encouraged Senator McConnell’s dishonorable actions in regard to Obama’s nominee, Judge Garland, but many others of the Republican party also participated in this action that brought heaps of dishonor upon themselves and their Party.
- Nomination and, in most cases, confirmation of numerous highly conservative Party members for the federal judiciary. This would be a true accomplishment if they were qualified, but most apparently have not been, which can found not only in the proceedings comments from Republicans, who expressed their dismay at certain nominees but then went on, to their discredit, to vote for confirmation anyways, but also in the fact that two were outright rejected in the last couple of weeks by Senator Grassley, Judiciary Committee Chairman, and another, after being humiliated by a Republican who questioned him, withdrew.
- Recent passage of a tax change bill (I cannot consider it a reform). However, as he contributed virtually nothing but his signature to it, this is a little difficult to credit. Still, in the spirit of Christmas generosity, we’ll give him some credit for a bill that was written in great haste, has low regard in popular opinion, and appears to have ignored all non-partisan evaluations in preference to the expert (or lack thereof) opinion of the politicos who have the most to gain from it. And if my reader is puzzled at my assertion that this is of low popularity, keep reading.
- The Executive Order that immigrants from certain nations be banned from entry to the United States. He certainly managed to issue that order. Then it ended up in the courts where it lost and lost before finally winning some sort of wan victory at the Supreme Court. Given the lack of terror attacks from immigrants in the United States since, oh, say Obama took over, it’s hard to define a useful measuring stick as to the efficacy of this Executive Order. Oh, but he got it out.
- Highest churn rate in White House staff, etc, in quite a while. From The New Yorker, we learn
This degree of churn is “off the charts,” according to Kathryn Dunn Tenpas, a non-resident senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, who has spent years tracking White House turnover rates. Next month, Tenpas will release her findings about Trump’s first year in office. The data—some of which she shared with me this week—is striking: even if every one of Trump’s senior aides stays put until January 20th, the anniversary of his Inauguration, his first-year turnover rate among senior staff—some sixty positions in total—will reach or exceed thirty-three per cent. Turnover, as Tenpas defines it, includes resignations, firings, and shifts of position within the White House. Trump’s first-year turnover rate will be three times higher than both Barack Obama’s (nine per cent) and Bill Clinton’s (eleven per cent) and double Ronald Reagan’s (seventeen per cent), which is as far back as Tenpas’s analysis goes. And this, almost certainly, is just the beginning.
Yeah, not much, so perhaps his aides had a solid reason to dissuade him from leaping to the dais. But I suspect this piece from Steve Benen may be even more instrumental in explaining their fears. And I do encourage the conservative reader to consider this piece carefully, as it fits in with all we know of Trump from public records and his recent behavior.
Donald Trump boasted two weeks ago that that the more Americans learn about the Republican tax plan, “the more popular it becomes.” Even at the time, that was wrong to the point of delusion.
And yet, there was the president this morning, describing the regressive GOP package as “very popular.” …
Does the president believe the nonsense or is he trying to deceive the public? Billy Bush, to whom Trump bragged about sexual assault during the infamous “Access Hollywood” recording, recently wrote a piece for the New York Times, which included an interesting anecdote.
In the days, weeks and months to follow, I was highly critical of the idea of a Trump presidency. The man who once told me – ironically, in another off-camera conversation – after I called him out for inflating his ratings: “People will just believe you. You just tell them and they believe you,” was, I thought, not a good choice to lead our country.
“People will just believe you. You just tell them and they believe you.”
For the reader who thought the tax bill is popular needs to seriously reconsider their sources of news. This should be a red flag that your approach to news gathering is defective. First rule of thumb – disregard everything the President says. Find independent news and facts – Fox News does not qualify – to verify or refute something that worries you OR pleases you.
And I think this is why the aides really discouraged him from a press conference. I think every time he opens his mouth, another 1000 independent voters go negative because they’re willing to look at what he says and realize that it doesn’t correlated with reality, while when he keeps his yap shut, he gains, to a very small degree, some credibility. Heck, he’s been relatively quiet recently and his Gallup Approval rating is almost 40%. That’s after approaching 30% every time another indictment of one of his former aides/campaign managers/friends, who he now reportedly never heard of, is handed down.
So it seems to me that keeping Trump quiet may be the long-term key to success. However you define success in this case.
