Does anyone think that, if Trump were to become president, he would basically do whatever he wants (within the limits of our government, of course) regardless of anything he’s ‘promised’ during his campaign?
To some extent this describes all politicians, but I don’t think he believes half the things he says and could imagine a scenario in which he’s just like, “Hey, thanks for the votes, now I’m gonna stop pretending to be aligned with republicans and do what I want.”
I think he would rapidly get frustrated at the fact that he couldn’t do whatever he wanted, but rather had to deal with Congress (and to some extent the Supreme Court) to get things done. The GOP would certainly attempt to work with him to achieve their agenda in return for giving him some of what he wanted (as long as it didn’t adversely affect them), but ultimately the relationship between the executive and legislative branches would become even more contentious than it is now and very little would be achieved.
In the event of an actual crisis, the country would be borked due to infighting-driven gridlock.
Going by the entirety of his history, both personal and professional, I have no reason to believe that he has suddenly taken an interest in anyone’s concerns but his own, nor have I seen any indication that he now honors his contracts any more than he has in the past.
I could also seriously see impeachment proceedings happening at some point. I mean, he’s already got the Trump University fraud and racketeering investigations ongoing in California and New York, plus what appears to be an escalating interest by the IRS into the Trump Foundation, so there’s a reasonable possibility that these things and more could trigger such a proceeding if Congress was in a sufficiently hostile frame of mind. And that’s assuming that no other questionable practices (e.g. substantive proof of involvement in the Cuban embargo violation) turn up.
This is pretty much what I think. He doesn’t want to *be *President - he just wants to win the election. The same way he always wanted a Purple Heart… :rolleyes:
He seems to not work well with other people. So I suppose he would have trouble getting anything passed through congress. The job of President requires a lot of back room deal making. If you tick off congress, they can make a lot of trouble! (Like removing funding for things.)
Presidents Johnson, Kennedy, Bush Sr., and Secretary of State Kissinger were all quite good at the backroom deals, as an example.
Trump doesn’t want to be president so he can accomplish a laundry list of policies. He wants to be president to feed his ego.
So of course all the things he talks about during the campaign become null and void the second he becomes president. That’s how Trump operates. He gets you to sign on the dotted line and pay your money, and that’s his cue to alter the deal, just like Darth Vader in Cloud City.
So the people who voted for him are going to end up just like the suckers who paid for Trump University. When Trump talks about building the wall he does it to get cheers, not because he gives a shit about building a wall. And so when he gets elected president he’s going to do whatever in the moment feeds his ego, whatever that happens to be, regardless of what he said yesterday or last week.
I would fully expect him to keep the media blitz going. The camera and microphone are like crack to him. So, he would probably expect to show up on TV for at least an hour a day, being interviewed, calling in, basically bloviating as is his wont.
What I was pointing out was his record(or lack thereof) of keeping his word. If he has a habit of fucking with people even when he has a contract with them, then what good is his word alone?
Remember Kasich’s claim back in July when Trump started looking for a running mate? Namely, Trump approached with the proposal that his VP would run all foreign and domestic affairs and leave Trump with the primary responsibility of ‘making America great again’.
You can read all kind of crazy stuff online, but the gist of that story squares very well with his apparent lack of interest in educating himself on policy.
I get the feeling he got into this basically for the publicity and got surprised by his early victories. Now he’s in it basically to win and doing what he thinks will achieve that end. But I doubt he believes or actually supports half of what he’s said and promised.
