Will He or Won't He Toss His Hair in the Ring?
Here we go again.
Donald Trump says he’ll tell us soon if he plans to run for president. I’ll tell you now: He won’t. The boy has cried wolf once too often.
The Donald would like being president, that’s for sure. Running and losing is something else altogether. Trump is the guy who fires people. Nobody fires him. And that includes GOP primary voters. He won’t give up a hit TV show to be a long shot, at best, in a crowded GOP field.
And that may be too bad. Sure, he’s not taken seriously by sophisticated political journalists who see him as a loud-mouth tycoon who brags too much about his ratings and his hotels and his golf courses -- and who just might decide, if he ran and somehow won, to put the letters T-R-U-M-P on the White House … in gold.
But I watched an interview Trump did recently with Bret Baier on Fox, and The Donald, said the kind of things that just might resonate with ordinary Americans.
“Our country is going to hell, we have people running the country that don’t know what they’re doing,” he said. That might ring a bell with independents who have grown weary of Barack Obama and might see Hillary as Obama’s third term stand-in.
If he runs, he says, his campaign slogan will be: “Make America great again.” Sort of rhymes with “It’s morning in America,” a slogan that worked for Ronald Reagan.
Ok, Ok. Trump isn’t Reagan. But you get the idea.
On taxes, Trump says, “I wouldn’t raise taxes, if anything I’d lower taxes.” And, “I’m proud of the fact that as a business man I want to pay as little tax as possible”
You won’t hear any politician – any! -- say that.
On immigration, he says Mexico is “not a friend” and “We have to build a wall,” throwing in for good measure, “No one can build a wall like Trump can build a wall.”
As for the 11 million or so who are here illegally: The bad ones get shipped out immediately under President Trump; the good ones “go through a system” that allows them to stay in this country and live like the rest of us. He wasn’t asked if that means they’d be on a track to citizenship.
On foreign policy, Trump says countries take advantage of the United States, “because they have no respect for our leadership.”
Domestically, The Donald says we need a countrywide infrastructure project. “I’m the best builder. Who’s better than Trump? And I know how to do it inexpensively.”
Sure, it easy to say anything about anything when you’re just talking on television. Sitting behind the desk in the Oval Office is a little harder. But despite his money, Trump’s connects with the other 99 percent. He’s not PC and he knows how to talk to people fed up with politics as usual. No, progressives wouldn’t vote for him. But Republicans would and so might a lot of low information types who don’t know much about politics but know they like Trump. He could also pick up some moderates who are tired of the Clintons and their shenanigans.
So, I could think of a lot worse things than Donald Trump running for president. But he won’t. And here in the United States of Entertainment, the long, long run to the White House won’t be nearly as interesting without him.