THE DAILY 202: DONALD TRUMP COMPLETES HOSTILE TAKEOVER OF WASHINGTON, PUTS BOTH PARTIES ON NOTICE
James Hohmann
Breanne Deppisch contributed.
THE BIG IDEA: President Trump completed his hostile takeover of the Republican Party last July, and on Friday he completed his hostile, if temporary, takeover of Washington.
In some significant ways, Trump is more like a corporate raider of the 1980s, when he came of age, than a typical politician of 2017. Thirty years ago, Gordon Gekko might have been more likely to deliver the speech that the billionaire businessman did today than Ronald Reagan.
No president has ever before referred to “the establishment” in his inaugural address nor declared that every country in the world ought to pursue its own self-interest. But the guy who ended the Bush dynasty and then vanquished the Clinton machine, in a period of 17 months, put “the establishment” of both parties on notice once more.
“For too long, a small group in our nation’s capital has reaped the rewards of government while the people have borne the cost,” he said, as leaders from each side of the aisle looked on stoically. “The establishment protected itself, but not the citizens of our country. … What truly matters is not which party controls our government, but whether our government is controlled by the people.”
-- The last time a Republican was president, Trump was still a registered Democrat. His improbable success should be viewed mainly as the triumph of an independent populist who used the splintered GOP as a vehicle to win power.
A veteran Democratic operative told me recently that he believes, if Trump had decided in Sept. 2009 that he wanted to stay in their party and pandered accordingly with a similarly protectionist and isolationist us-versus-them message, he would have defeated Hillary for the nomination in 2016. This person, it should be noted, spent last year working on Clinton’s behalf.
-- Just as Trump figured out a way to co-opt the conservative movement, Republicans in Washington (from K Street to the Capitol) are now trying to co-opt him and the Trumpist movement. In many cases, the Trump-GOP relationship can be symbiotic. But the inaugural address hinted pretty strongly at the fundamental divergence between the two sides over the virtue of free trade, the value of immigration, the size of government, the role the state should play in people’s personal lives and America’s place in the world.
The most important question, which we will find out the answer to over the coming year, is whether Trump will let himself be used as a vessel to advance an agenda that is not really his own or whether movement conservatives will continue to capitulate and kowtow when their priorities and values conflict with Trump’s.
SIX OTHER TAKEAWAYS FROM THE INAUGURATION:
1. The warm-up speakers unintentionally underscored how divided the country has become.
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, the only Democrat to speak during the program, was interrupted several times by boos as he gently rebuked Trumpism. “We live in a challenging and tumultuous time, a quickly evolving, ever more interconnected world, a rapidly changing economy that benefits too few, while leaving too many behind, a fractured media, a politics frequently consumed by rancor,” he said, as the crowd out on the National Mall began to jeer.
The New York senator was about to say that he’s the confident the country will persevere, but the Trump fans in the crowd didn’t hear that part because they were booing. “Every day, we stand up for core democratic principles enshrined in the Constitution,” Schumer said, “the rule of law, equal protection for all under law, the freedom of speech, press, religion — the things that make America America.” A few years back, who would have thought that a line like this would become so controversial?
Roy Blunt, the chairman of the committee that organized the inauguration, delivered a subtle critique of the 67 House Democrats who boycotted the ceremony. He said that the day was “not a celebration of victory but a celebration of democracy.” The Republican senator from Missouri then delivered a poignant history lesson about the peaceful transfer of power, making the point that John Adams turning over the presidency to Thomas Jefferson was as big as deal as George Washington stepping aside for Adams because it showed that political rivals could play by the rules enshrined in the Constitution. He quoted Ronald Reagan’s 1981 declaration that inaugurations are “both commonplace and miraculous.” These comments, just as seemingly anodyne as Schumer’s, drew attacks from the left on social media, with activists claiming that Trump is not legitimate.
2. Trump stuck to his script. He was self-disciplined during the ceremony and hewed closely to his script, intent on playing the part of a president. I wonder if it occurred to Obama as he watched Trump turn his head left and right to read from the Teleprompters that his successor once relentlessly mocked him, in virtually every speech, for using the same machines.
3. The inaugural speech was not too different from Trump’s stump speech during the campaign. There were no chants of “lock her up,” and he didn’t swear. But several of the riffs and the closing – when the crowd joined with Trump to say “Make America Great Again” in unison – sounded exactly like something he might have said in October.
4. He continued to paint an exceptionally dark portrait of America. One of the pastors who prayed during the invocation read from the chapter in Matthew that inspired “the shining city upon a hill” Ronald Reagan loved to talk about. Trump nodded briefly to the idea that America can be a beacon of hope, but he mostly reiterated the Hobbesian world view that characterized his speech at the Republican National Convention in Cleveland.
In fact, the president literally spoke of “American carnage”: “Mothers and children trapped in poverty in our inner cities; rusted out factories scattered like tombstones across the landscape of our nation; an education system flush with cash, but which leaves our young and beautiful students deprived of all knowledge; and the crime and the gangs and the drugs that have stolen too many lives and robbed our country of so much unrealized potential. This American carnage stops right here and stops right now.”
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5. The anarchists in the streets are playing right into Trump’s hands. The mass disturbances across Washington today highlight some of the non-GOP resistance Trump will face, but the anarchy – including a limo being torched right outside of The Post’s newsroom – plays into the president’s hands. It earns Trump public sympathy and validates his dark warnings about lurking dangers on the home front. It also makes it harder for conservatives to resist potential executive overreach.
For Trump’s “haters,” as he likes to call them, the fact that rain began to fall at exactly the moment he started to speak signaled something significant. There were also little, non-violent reminders of the strenuous opposition he will face no matter what he does. Someone in the stands loudly blew a whistle as he took the oath of office, which could be heard on stage, as another protester yelled that he was “illegitimate.” Both noises were drowned out by a 21-gun salute. (Chief Justice John Roberts got the words right this time, by the way.)
6. Finally, Trump set a very high bar for himself to clear in 2020. “I will never, ever let you down,” he declared. The president told people as he worked on the speech that he was intrigued by John F. Kennedy’s 1961 call for getting a man on the moon by the end of the decade. He rolled out no moonshot initiative today, but Trump did say elliptically that he’s excited “to free the earth from the miseries of disease.” That line reminded me of when Obama declared that the seas would stop rising after he won.
He made several big promises that his opponents will certainly try to remind voters of when he seeks reelection. Among them was a promise to “unite the civilized world against radical Islamic terrorism, which we will eradicate from the face of the Earth.” He also promised to “bring back our jobs … bring back our borders … bring back our wealth … (and) bring back our dreams.”
The challenge of governing is that you have to produce results, and that’s clearly starting to sink in. As Trump said, “We will no longer accept politicians who are all talk and no action, constantly complaining, but never doing anything about it. The time for empty talk is over.”
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