Writer Nancy Cook detailed in a recent Politico article that, counter to the tradition of past presidents, Donald J. Trump apparently has decided — on his own, shockingly — to circumvent the fish bowl exposure of the Oval Office and West Wing and conduct meetings and phone calls that demand privacy and strict confidentiality in his residence in the White House.
There, away from the prying eyes of the media — and, as we have come to learn, certain staff members who may be pursuing agendas counter to his — the president can conduct some of the nation’s business with at least a bit more comfort and seclusion.
While some will identify this as yet one more negative to hold against him, the switch actually serves to highlight the impressive instincts of a man who does understand that many from every entrenched establishment in Washington — as well as some in the media, academia and entertainment — are working overtly or covertly to delegitimize him and sabotage his policies.
From day one, a continual knock against President Trump from these elites has been that “Trump is a one-man band who can’t be controlled.”
Newsflash: It is precisely because he is a one-man band who can’t be controlled that he got himself elected president and is transforming a calcified government into a more fluid process that better reflects his vision and experience.
Because Trump is the outsider of all outsiders to these elites, they refuse to give him credit for any positive momentum or accomplishment — none.
Yet his first accomplishment, against all odds and most predictions, was to win the White House in 2016. He did so with almost no real campaign. The nonpolitician, anti-insider “bumpkin” won over voters across America to become president of the United States. To me and many others, it is the single greatest political accomplishment in our nation’s history.
At the moment, it seems that even many of our historians are left of center and speaking out against Trump. But someday that profession might remember it is supposed to be unbiased and honest. When that day arrives, historians will record Trump’s victory as an astounding political accomplishment.
Let’s not forget, this outsider beat 16 experienced, well-funded Republican candidates and their collective army of professional political minds — beat them like a drum. Next, the man who is ridiculed by the liberal elites and “Never Trumpers” for the way he speaks, looks and acts went on to beat the candidate heavily favored to win the White House: Hillary Clinton.
There is a “Trump can’t win” compilation on YouTube that showcases political, media and celebrity elites mocking Trump as they “guarantee” that he will, first, “not run for president” and then, second, “lose quickly in the primary” and, finally, “get embarrassed by Hillary Clinton in the general election.”
I have no contact with this president or his team, but I have to imagine that every once in a while — in the privacy of that residence — Donald Trump pulls up that video of prima donna predictors and simply laughs himself silly.
An “outsider,” a “joke,” a “nobody” beat them all at their own game — and it has caused many of them to become unhinged.
Rather than focus on the issues that concern their constituents or voters, those who openly acknowledge hating Trump, or being part of the Resistance movement against him, appear to have fallen into the trap he set for them.
No one should be surprised. This “one-man band who can’t be controlled and will never win” set similar traps for his primary opponents and then Clinton. All of them stumbled into the traps because of their own hubris, their egos and tone-deafness to the voices of millions of Americans.
It’s likely that Trump doesn’t mind that those who hate him waste their time and energy screaming about Russia, Ukraine, his golf courses, and the possibility of impeachment — while he pays attention to issues of concern to millions of citizens, such as health care, education, immigration, job security, crime and energy costs. These things matter to those who still believe in the president in spite of the endless attacks upon him.
Yes, Trump has reinvented the presidency. He plays by his own rules. He has changed the tenor and tone of the Oval Office, made it his own — as every president does to a degree.
You don’t like that? There is a solution. Stop whining and wasting your time trying to steal back the White House and simply gear up to try to beat him at the ballot box.
In the meantime, the one-man band plays on.
Douglas MacKinnon, a political and communications consultant, was a writer in the White House for Presidents Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush, and former special assistant for policy and communications at the Pentagon during the last three years of the Bush administration.