President Donald Trump is either the most ignorant president elected in a century (or more) or he is the most brilliant manipulator elected since either Johnson or Nixon (take your pick, they were both masters of vote counting at one point). Either the president doesn’t understand how agencies work, particularly the Justice Department, or he knows how agencies work and doesn’t care if he misrepresents the people working to protect our nation.
Consistently, Trump’s rhetorical moves are stunningly self-serving. Trump places his own interests above national security and ethical obligations to his office. Trump appears to care more about his image and perceptions of his status as the rightfully elected president of the United States than he does our shared security. The legitimacy of his electoral victory consumes Donald Trump, shaping his worldview and his insecurity as chief executive.
Real leaders don’t tell you they are great leaders. The most effective politicians persuade by appealing to the self-interests of other politicians. Trump, however, seems unable to grasp that you win votes on legislation by convincing the legislators that their voters will reward good decisions. Trump relies on bullying, and bullying alone to lead — and his only clear priority is himself.
As a rhetorician, I wish I were still surprised that many people accept Trump’s perspective. His arguments are only logical from his personal perspective.
Yesterday and today, Trump used his Twitter account for the following ignorant statements:
Consider how stunning this rhetorical move is. Trump is suggesting that exploring the Russian meddling in the United States elections and society in general serves only to further the goals of the Russian oligarchs and President Vladimir Putin. Trump argues that investigating, ideally learning how to reduce vulnerabilities exploited by Russian and other foreign agents, somehow weakens the United States. China, North Korea, Iran, and Turkey have all used social media, computer hacking, and phishing scams to manipulate Americans. We must learn how to reduce such manipulations of our citizens and elected officials.
In Trump’s universe, “everyone does it” is reason to ignore foreign involvement in public policy debates and even elections. Yes, the U.S. and most other nations do support political movements in other countries. We give technical and financial support to opposition parties and we fund media, such as the Voice of America. We have directly participated in revolutions, coups, and invasions. The U.S. does not have clean hands when it comes to interfering in sovereign nations.
Our sins do not make it acceptable today to tolerate foreign meddling in our national politics. Not only should we seek to secure our national conversations, the U.S. should pledge to reduce our own meddling in sovereign affairs.
Does Trump convince anyone that ignoring a crime is the best way to prevent the crime? Does Trump believe that the best way to avoid hackers and trolls is to ignore how the hackers gained access to networks and how the trolls fed social media? He certainly seems to believe ignoring Russia’s meddling is somehow good policy — at least for Trump’s personal image.
Trump takes facts and statements out of context. He makes outrageous claims. According to the Washington Post, Trump offers a factual error or misleading claim an average of three times a day. Three times a day, the president says or Tweets something inaccurate. That rate is too high for it to be a series of daily honest mistakes.
Not only does Trump want Congress to stop investigating Russian meddling, he wants the FBI to stop investigating Russian-related matters. To support his call that the FBI abandon the Russia investigations, Trump links the Russia issues to the recent Florida high school shooting.
The FBI teams handling the Russia investigation have nothing to do with other FBI operations. The agents and staff of the FBI operate in clearly defined specialized units. The teams assigned to investigating events such as the Florida shooting work with state and local law enforcement, alongside other federal agencies. These teams have nothing to do with national security or international investigations into Russian election interference.
Special counsel Robert S. Mueller has an independent investigative team. His team is assigned to the Russia matters, period. Other agents in the FBI, CIA, NSA, and elsewhere are busy performing their regular duties. There is no distraction caused by having a relatively small team investigating the role of Russia in our elections.
Trump implies that the FBI is somehow incapable of multiple tasks. From yesterday:
Trump goes further when he attacks, at least indirectly, public statements by National Security Advisor General H. R. McMaster. The president has demonstrated a penchant for attacking his own appointees. Everyone who isn’t promoting the Trump brand is suspect to Donald Trump, a man who demands loyalty to him before loyalty to office and public service.
A real leader would be using the Russia investigations to unite the public. Trump had an opportunity early in his administration to bring together the political parties, government agencies, and congressional leadership. He could have made protecting the security of our elections a unifying issue. He lost that opportunity long ago. Instead, he continues to polarize by focusing on his campaign and denying any collusion with Russian actors.
Is our president ignorant or brilliant? I do not know. He understands social media and self-promotion better than most experts with doctoral degrees. He knows that bad press coverage is still coverage, a lesson he learned as a real estate developer. He sells “Trump” the brand, through business failures and personal failures.
By focusing on himself, Trump does distract the media and voters from everything else. He moves from scandal to scandal so quickly there’s no time to reflect on how damaging each new revelation might be.
We’re being played by a master, I fear. How do we teach about this in our classrooms? We must study how Trump works, so there isn’t another Trump. Sadly, I anticipate there will be another. We already have a lifetime of potential scholarship for experts in rhetoric, linguistics, social media, political science, and other fields. There’s no end to how many assumptions Trump has disproved regarding political persuasion.
Since Richard Nixon, we have consistently elected the lesser of qualified of major party candidates. Voters reject the insiders, out of distrust. Trump knew that and appealed to that desire for political ignorance. We elected someone who at least promoted himself as proudly ignorant of the ways of Washington.
Donald Trump might be brilliantly ignorant, a Twitter persona developed by a master of self-promotion.