Donald Trump’s The Art of the Keel
By Olivia Nuzzi
Jan 25, 2019
Donald Trump was already 40 minutes late when the deep Wrestlemania voice came over the speaker in the Rose Garden with an announcement: “Ladies and gentlemen, the program will begin in two minutes.”
Donald Trump admits a temporary retreat, if not outright defeat, in the shutdown fight. Photo: Olivier Douliery/Getty Images
We knew that “the program” would address the temporary end of the longest government shutdown in history, during which 800,000 federal workers were either furloughed or asked to work without pay for two consecutive pay periods over 35 days. The White House scheduled the event at the very last minute, as news began to break that the president had reached an agreement with congressional leaders.
But standing on the freezing dirt waiting for it to begin, what was less clear was The Art of the Keel, or how Trump would attempt to spin his defeat. The shutdown was unpopular from the beginning, and over time, as negotiations fell apart and members of his administration said one callous and idiotic thing after another, Trump only received more of the blame. Accepting the very kind of deal he said he’d never accept — one to temporarily end the shutdown with no funding for a Southern border wall — would do nothing to satisfy those already mad at him and everything to upset his base of far-right supporters whose top priority had consistently been ensuring that he wouldn’t “cave.”
It’s not as though Trump could be expected to deliver a sober statement assessing where he’d gone wrong and apologizing to everyone his decisions had harmed. Yet he had to speak, and at times, as he did, it felt like the exercise was a form of catharsis, as if the way in which he spoke — not the specific words he said, but the machine gun stream of consciousness, the off script riffing — was a way for him to work through his frustrations about this entire self-made crisis.
Seven minutes after the two-minute warning, Trump eventually walked out of the Oval Office and to the lectern. The press was assembled before him, with the cameras positioned farthest back and the correspondents arranged in two sections in front. Between the two sections, there was a pathway leading directly from the president to a large teleprompter, positioned among the cameras, that contained his speech, each word typed so large that it could hardly fit a dozen at a time.
Members of his administration — Mike Pence, Mike Pompeo, Jared Kushner, Kellyanne Conway, John Bolton, Elaine Chao, and others — looked on. They stood off to the side, as far away as possible from the reporters and cameras, applauding like we were at some kind of hometown game.
“I am very proud to announce today that we have reached a deal to end the shutdown and reopen the federal government,” he said, “ ‘cause everyone knows I have a very powerful alternative but I didn’t want to use it at this time. Hopefully it will be unnecessary.” He thanked federal workers “and their amazing families” for their devotion, acknowledging their suffering and applauding them for not complaining. He claimed “in many cases” federal workers had encouraged him to continue the shutdown. “When I say Make America Great Again, it could never be done without you! Great people.”
As he delivered his remarks, Trump seemed to go off script more and more. This is something he always does, but it was difficult to ignore with the teleprompter so close by. I found myself getting distracted, watching as the scrolling of the prompter slowed and stopped to accommodate his ad libbing. I noticed other members of the press turning to look back, too. At one point, he was veering from his prepared remarks so often that I thought I might get whiplash as I turned to watch him speak and then abruptly turned toward the prompter and then back to his face and back to the prompter and what is he even saying? Something about duct tape?
The entire extended, violent fantasy involving women bound with duct tape did not appear to be preprogrammed into the teleprompter at all. “Human traffickers!” he said. “The victims are women and children, maybe to a lesser extent, believe it or not, children. Women are tied up, they’re bound, duct tape put around their faces” — as he said this, he motioned his right hand as if he was wrapping his own head with duct tape — “around their mouths. In many cases, they can’t even breathe. They’re put in the backs of cars or vans or trucks. They don’t go through your port of entry. They make a right turn going very quickly, they go into the desert areas or whatever areas you can look at, and as soon as there’s no protection, they make a left or a right into the United States of America. There’s nobody to catch ‘em, there’s nobody to find ‘em. They can’t come through the port, because if they come through the port, people will see: four women! Sitting in a van! With tape around their face” — again, he gestured to his own face — “and around their mouth. Can’t have that.”
Somewhere in the middle of the nearly 20 minutes of remarks, I felt like I was forgetting why we were there. This was ostensibly a speech about the reopening of the government, but it served more as an informercial for the supposed merits of a Southern border wall that Trump seems less likely to get today than at perhaps any other point in his presidency.
“If we don’t get a fair deal from Congress, the government will either shut down on February 15th — again — or I will use the powers afforded to me under the laws and the Constitution of the United States to address this emergency,” Trump said, in conclusion. “We will have great security. And I want to thank you all very much. Thank you very much.”
As the press shouted questions about the shutdown and about the other big news of the day — the arrest and indictment of Roger Stone, Trump’s friend and adviser of more than 40 years — Trump walked through the door and back into the Oval Office without another word.
In the modern era of presidential primaries, no incumbent president has ever lost renomination. Heck, the last time a president didn’t win renomination was in 1884, when Republican President Chester A. Arthur lost to James Blaine at the GOP convention. …
But if Hogan’s goal is to win a substantial share of the vote while making the case for a different kind of Republicanism, that seems more attainable. National polls find Trump in reasonably good shape against potential primary foes, but surveys suggest that at least some Republicans in the early primary states of New Hampshire and Iowa might be open to alternatives. …
Still, Hogan could have a tough time breaking through. If Trump’s popularity among Republicans holds steady, he’ll go into the 2020 primary with one of the highest intra-party approval ratings of any recent president running for re-election. Also, Hogan has generally shied away from social issues such as abortion — though he’s personally against it — which means he might have trouble attracting support among socially conservative Republicans. Although that might not be much of a problem for Hogan in less socially conservative states like New Hampshire, it’s difficult to see him building meaningful support in other early primary states such as Iowa or South Carolina (if they even participate in the GOP primary in 2020). One can imagine Hogan winning over some suburban voters in the Northeast, Mid-Atlantic and West Coast, but it’s not clear that he could win a state beyond his own, which probably won’t vote until April 2020.
First, a prosecutor would need to appeal to – perhaps exploit – Stone’s natural sense of self-preservation. For all the trouble he has been mixed up in over his long career, Stone has never been at any real risk of serving time behind bars. Friday’s indictment might change his bearing a bit. It’s one thing to rail publicly against the possibility of a theoretical future indictment, but another to see seven federal criminal charges, carrying a total maximum sentence of 50 years, in black and white. As a practical matter, Stone isn’t looking at anything close to 50 years, but he easily could be facing five years or so if convicted on all counts. For a 66 year-old man like Stone, that could mean most or all of the rest of his life, which has to be at least a bit sobering. And the evidence laid out in the indictment seems locked in; over and over again, the indictment quotes Stone’s lies and then cites hard proof – typically Stone’s own texts – to prove that he lied. A good prosecutor could make a compelling case that cooperation offers Stone his best and most realistic chance to get through the case without having to serve time.
Second, as much as we don’t like to acknowledge it in our quest for pure justice, money matters. It is expensive to defend yourself in federal court, and it is jaw-droppingly costly to go to trial. Stone has flashed vulnerability on this, declaring that he faces legal fees of $2 million – not an outrageous estimate, if a trial is involved – while noting that he is “not a wealthy man” and begging for crowdfunded donations.
Third, Stone is nothing if not ego-driven. We all are, of course, but Stone’s in his own league. A prosecutor might therefore make a pitch to Stone along these lines. You can stay quiet, you can be a “stand-up” guy, you can fight the government and maybe even go to trial. Trump will send nice tweets about you, you’ll have a heavy media following for a couple years, but ultimately you’ll be a strange footnote in history. Or you can flip and be John Dean.
—Elie Honig, former Assistant U.S. Attorney in the Southern District of New York
During the shutdown, no new logging projects went forward, nor did fuel reduction programs like brush clearing, controlled fires and slash-pile burns. Also, much of the planning and hiring of firefighters that typically gets done in winter was put on hold. Some federal employees, unauthorized to speak to the media, say fire programs at national parks and forests won’t be fully staffed before the new fire season begins.
“A lot of preparation just didn’t happen,” said Stephen Graydon, a former firefighter for the U.S. Forest Service and now executive director of Terra Fuego, a Butte County organization that works with the government to reduce fire risk. “It’s hard enough to get ahead on large-scale forest treatments. While I can’t give you a number of acres that wasn’t treated during the shutdown, we’ve lost opportunities. The shutdown will have a lasting effect.” …
“For Trump to come out here and see the devastation and then handcuff people by taking federal agencies out of action, it’s somewhat a slap in the face,” Graydon said.
http://nymag.com/intelligencer/2019/01/donald...tdown.html
By Olivia Nuzzi
Jan 25, 2019
Donald Trump was already 40 minutes late when the deep Wrestlemania voice came over the speaker in the Rose Garden with an announcement: “Ladies and gentlemen, the program will begin in two minutes.”
Donald Trump admits a temporary retreat, if not outright defeat, in the shutdown fight. Photo: Olivier Douliery/Getty Images
We knew that “the program” would address the temporary end of the longest government shutdown in history, during which 800,000 federal workers were either furloughed or asked to work without pay for two consecutive pay periods over 35 days. The White House scheduled the event at the very last minute, as news began to break that the president had reached an agreement with congressional leaders.
But standing on the freezing dirt waiting for it to begin, what was less clear was The Art of the Keel, or how Trump would attempt to spin his defeat. The shutdown was unpopular from the beginning, and over time, as negotiations fell apart and members of his administration said one callous and idiotic thing after another, Trump only received more of the blame. Accepting the very kind of deal he said he’d never accept — one to temporarily end the shutdown with no funding for a Southern border wall — would do nothing to satisfy those already mad at him and everything to upset his base of far-right supporters whose top priority had consistently been ensuring that he wouldn’t “cave.”
It’s not as though Trump could be expected to deliver a sober statement assessing where he’d gone wrong and apologizing to everyone his decisions had harmed. Yet he had to speak, and at times, as he did, it felt like the exercise was a form of catharsis, as if the way in which he spoke — not the specific words he said, but the machine gun stream of consciousness, the off script riffing — was a way for him to work through his frustrations about this entire self-made crisis.
Seven minutes after the two-minute warning, Trump eventually walked out of the Oval Office and to the lectern. The press was assembled before him, with the cameras positioned farthest back and the correspondents arranged in two sections in front. Between the two sections, there was a pathway leading directly from the president to a large teleprompter, positioned among the cameras, that contained his speech, each word typed so large that it could hardly fit a dozen at a time.
Members of his administration — Mike Pence, Mike Pompeo, Jared Kushner, Kellyanne Conway, John Bolton, Elaine Chao, and others — looked on. They stood off to the side, as far away as possible from the reporters and cameras, applauding like we were at some kind of hometown game.
“I am very proud to announce today that we have reached a deal to end the shutdown and reopen the federal government,” he said, “ ‘cause everyone knows I have a very powerful alternative but I didn’t want to use it at this time. Hopefully it will be unnecessary.” He thanked federal workers “and their amazing families” for their devotion, acknowledging their suffering and applauding them for not complaining. He claimed “in many cases” federal workers had encouraged him to continue the shutdown. “When I say Make America Great Again, it could never be done without you! Great people.”
As he delivered his remarks, Trump seemed to go off script more and more. This is something he always does, but it was difficult to ignore with the teleprompter so close by. I found myself getting distracted, watching as the scrolling of the prompter slowed and stopped to accommodate his ad libbing. I noticed other members of the press turning to look back, too. At one point, he was veering from his prepared remarks so often that I thought I might get whiplash as I turned to watch him speak and then abruptly turned toward the prompter and then back to his face and back to the prompter and what is he even saying? Something about duct tape?
The entire extended, violent fantasy involving women bound with duct tape did not appear to be preprogrammed into the teleprompter at all. “Human traffickers!” he said. “The victims are women and children, maybe to a lesser extent, believe it or not, children. Women are tied up, they’re bound, duct tape put around their faces” — as he said this, he motioned his right hand as if he was wrapping his own head with duct tape — “around their mouths. In many cases, they can’t even breathe. They’re put in the backs of cars or vans or trucks. They don’t go through your port of entry. They make a right turn going very quickly, they go into the desert areas or whatever areas you can look at, and as soon as there’s no protection, they make a left or a right into the United States of America. There’s nobody to catch ‘em, there’s nobody to find ‘em. They can’t come through the port, because if they come through the port, people will see: four women! Sitting in a van! With tape around their face” — again, he gestured to his own face — “and around their mouth. Can’t have that.”
Somewhere in the middle of the nearly 20 minutes of remarks, I felt like I was forgetting why we were there. This was ostensibly a speech about the reopening of the government, but it served more as an informercial for the supposed merits of a Southern border wall that Trump seems less likely to get today than at perhaps any other point in his presidency.
“If we don’t get a fair deal from Congress, the government will either shut down on February 15th — again — or I will use the powers afforded to me under the laws and the Constitution of the United States to address this emergency,” Trump said, in conclusion. “We will have great security. And I want to thank you all very much. Thank you very much.”
As the press shouted questions about the shutdown and about the other big news of the day — the arrest and indictment of Roger Stone, Trump’s friend and adviser of more than 40 years — Trump walked through the door and back into the Oval Office without another word.
In the modern era of presidential primaries, no incumbent president has ever lost renomination. Heck, the last time a president didn’t win renomination was in 1884, when Republican President Chester A. Arthur lost to James Blaine at the GOP convention. …
But if Hogan’s goal is to win a substantial share of the vote while making the case for a different kind of Republicanism, that seems more attainable. National polls find Trump in reasonably good shape against potential primary foes, but surveys suggest that at least some Republicans in the early primary states of New Hampshire and Iowa might be open to alternatives. …
Still, Hogan could have a tough time breaking through. If Trump’s popularity among Republicans holds steady, he’ll go into the 2020 primary with one of the highest intra-party approval ratings of any recent president running for re-election. Also, Hogan has generally shied away from social issues such as abortion — though he’s personally against it — which means he might have trouble attracting support among socially conservative Republicans. Although that might not be much of a problem for Hogan in less socially conservative states like New Hampshire, it’s difficult to see him building meaningful support in other early primary states such as Iowa or South Carolina (if they even participate in the GOP primary in 2020). One can imagine Hogan winning over some suburban voters in the Northeast, Mid-Atlantic and West Coast, but it’s not clear that he could win a state beyond his own, which probably won’t vote until April 2020.
First, a prosecutor would need to appeal to – perhaps exploit – Stone’s natural sense of self-preservation. For all the trouble he has been mixed up in over his long career, Stone has never been at any real risk of serving time behind bars. Friday’s indictment might change his bearing a bit. It’s one thing to rail publicly against the possibility of a theoretical future indictment, but another to see seven federal criminal charges, carrying a total maximum sentence of 50 years, in black and white. As a practical matter, Stone isn’t looking at anything close to 50 years, but he easily could be facing five years or so if convicted on all counts. For a 66 year-old man like Stone, that could mean most or all of the rest of his life, which has to be at least a bit sobering. And the evidence laid out in the indictment seems locked in; over and over again, the indictment quotes Stone’s lies and then cites hard proof – typically Stone’s own texts – to prove that he lied. A good prosecutor could make a compelling case that cooperation offers Stone his best and most realistic chance to get through the case without having to serve time.
Second, as much as we don’t like to acknowledge it in our quest for pure justice, money matters. It is expensive to defend yourself in federal court, and it is jaw-droppingly costly to go to trial. Stone has flashed vulnerability on this, declaring that he faces legal fees of $2 million – not an outrageous estimate, if a trial is involved – while noting that he is “not a wealthy man” and begging for crowdfunded donations.
Third, Stone is nothing if not ego-driven. We all are, of course, but Stone’s in his own league. A prosecutor might therefore make a pitch to Stone along these lines. You can stay quiet, you can be a “stand-up” guy, you can fight the government and maybe even go to trial. Trump will send nice tweets about you, you’ll have a heavy media following for a couple years, but ultimately you’ll be a strange footnote in history. Or you can flip and be John Dean.
—Elie Honig, former Assistant U.S. Attorney in the Southern District of New York
During the shutdown, no new logging projects went forward, nor did fuel reduction programs like brush clearing, controlled fires and slash-pile burns. Also, much of the planning and hiring of firefighters that typically gets done in winter was put on hold. Some federal employees, unauthorized to speak to the media, say fire programs at national parks and forests won’t be fully staffed before the new fire season begins.
“A lot of preparation just didn’t happen,” said Stephen Graydon, a former firefighter for the U.S. Forest Service and now executive director of Terra Fuego, a Butte County organization that works with the government to reduce fire risk. “It’s hard enough to get ahead on large-scale forest treatments. While I can’t give you a number of acres that wasn’t treated during the shutdown, we’ve lost opportunities. The shutdown will have a lasting effect.” …
“For Trump to come out here and see the devastation and then handcuff people by taking federal agencies out of action, it’s somewhat a slap in the face,” Graydon said.
http://nymag.com/intelligencer/2019/01/donald...tdown.html
