The New York Times tells us about President Trump’s TV strategy:
One West Wing official, who requested anonymity to speak candidly about strategy, said the administration craved the split-screen television images of Mr. Trump at round-table discussions with business executives every few days on one side, and the vehement protesters of his administration on the other.
This sounds right. Trump seems to believe that sitting around a table with powerful business executives is “presidential.” It’s basically a child’s idea of what a president looks like. So that’s what he does. I don’t think it’s even cynical image manipulation on his part. He really does think this is what makes a president presidential.
Meanwhile, back in the real world, we have this:
A day before delivering a high-stakes address on Tuesday to a joint session of Congress, Mr. Trump will demand a budget with tens of billions of dollars in reductions to the Environmental Protection Agency and State Department, according to four senior administration officials with direct knowledge of the plan. Social safety net programs, aside from the big entitlement programs for retirees, would also be hit hard.
This is obviously the work of Mike Pence and OMB Director Mick Mulvaney more than it is of Trump himself, but Trump will nonetheless be the master showman selling this plan. It’s also more symbolic than anything else, but it’s symbolism that matters since it means Trump is signaling that he’s willing to go along with Paul Ryan’s feverish devotion to cutting spending on the poor. We already know that Trump is also eager to cut taxes on the rich, so it appears he and Ryan are entirely on the same page. The next few months promise to be bloody.
