The Myth of Trump's "Independence"

In the wake of Der Trumpenführer's recent - and likely short lived - rapprochement with Democrats Chuck Shumer and Nancy Pelosi, some in the media are breathlessly claiming that Trump is independent of party ties and ideology.  Many of these media mavens are the same ones that painted a picture of false equivalency between Trump and Clinton  throughout the 2016 presidential campaign, so the real take away should be that they still have their heads up their ass. If Trump has any "independence," it is because as a malignant narcissist he is impulsive and does whatever he thinks will enhance his perception and often punish those who displease him at the same time.  Hence any relationship with the man is more like living with someone with bi-polar disorder than any independence from ideology.  Frank Rich has a piece in New York Magazine that looks at the ridiculousness of thinking Trump has any kind of bipartisan agenda.  Here are excerpts:

Trump’s decision last week to accept the debt-ceiling deal pushed by Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi, shocked conservatives [who] floated rumors that they’d target Paul Ryan’s Speakership to help their agenda, . . . . Before this one brief shining moment of “bipartisanship” goes up in smoke, we must relish the sheer delight of watching Trump stiff Ryan and Mitch McConnell in favor of his new besties, “Chuck and Nancy.” It didn’t turn out well for the Vichy collaborators in World War II, and the same fate in one way or another will befall those Republican leaders who abandoned whatever principles they had once Trump occupied their party. History will be merciless to them, but how much fun to watch them reduced to thunderstruck supernumeraries in real time.

Still, this instance of victory for congressional Democrats was a one-off. The new coinage that Trump is somehow an “independent,” with its implicit invocation of the Teddy Roosevelts of American history, is a way of dignifying and normalizing erratic behavior that hasn’t changed from the start. It’s the latest iteration of those previous moments when wishful centrist pundits started saying things like “Today Trump became president” simply because he stuck to a teleprompter script when addressing Congress or bombed Syria.

Trump is an “independent” in the same way a toddler is. He jumped at the Democrats’ deal solely on impulse.  He remains a drama queen who likes to grab attention any way he can, especially when he thinks he can please a crowd, whether the mobs at his rallies or the press Establishment he claims to loathe but whose approval he has always desperately craved. The most telling aspect of this whole incident was his morning-after phone call to Schumer to express his excitement that he was getting rave reviews not only from Fox but CNN and MSNBC as well.

None of this amounts to a broader opening for congressional Democrats. The deal’s sole accomplishments were to (temporarily) prevent the government from defaulting or shutting down and make a first installment on Hurricane Harvey relief. That this can be greeted by anyone as any kind of breakthrough in governance shows just how low the bar has become for achievement by this Congress and this White House. Yet a Vichy Republican in the House, Peter King of Long Island, declared, “I think this could be a new day for the Republican Party” and a “gateway” to “bipartisan progress.” You have to ask, what gateway drug is he on to spew such nonsense? The Republican majority of which he is a card-carrying member shows no signs of delivering on health care, tax reform, infrastructure, or anything else. All it’s done is kept the lights on in the Capitol for another three months.

But let us cherish the high farce of this moment while we can.  Gail Collins at the Times has written some quite amusing columns in which she tries to determine who is the worst member of the Trump cabinet. God knows the competition is stiff, from Ben Carson to Betsy DeVos to Tom Price and Ryan Zinke. (What does it say that Rick Perry can’t even make the short list?)

Of course Bannon talks to Trump regularly — the proof is that the dissembling White House press secretary, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, so pointedly denied it after the 60 Minutes broadcast. And he will certainly be as much of a political bomb thrower as he’s always been.

It’s somewhat astonishing, as others have pointed out, that in a long interview Charlie Rose never asked Bannon about his collaboration with Mercer. Their plan to spend Mercer’s money in 2018 to challenge sitting Republican senators whom they see as disloyal to Trump, like Dean Heller of Nevada and Jeff Flake of Arizona, may create serious political havoc for the GOP. And when Bannon promises a “civil war” within the Republican Party over the fate of the Dreamers next year, he has both the media means (in Breitbart) and Mercer’s cash to fan the flames of anti-immigrant xenophobia and make that war as bloody as possible. However much power Bannon does or does not have in the White House, we can be certain that his sway over this president vastly exceeds that of Ryan and McConnell — and maybe even Chuck and Nancy.

 Get out the popcorn.