Oct.16

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Still Crazy After All These... Hours

On Monday, Donald Trump held a rally/town hall that ended with 30+ minutes of music and him dancing/singing on stage. Yesterday, he sat for an interview with Bloomberg, and... well, let's just say that the "crazy" tap is still flowing. It was about an hour, if you want to watch all or part of it, here it is:

We'd set it to start at the crazypants part, except that the crazypants parts were widely dispersed throughout.

The interview was conducted by Bloomberg Editor-In-Chief John Micklethwait, and given that outlet's focus, the questions were focused on economic policies. Here's a rundown of the "greatest hits":

• Trump, of course, has no idea how tariffs actually work. So, Micklethwait tried to educate the former president, explaining that most or all of the costs would just be passed on to American consumers. We would add that tariffs also strongly encourage companies to find workarounds, sometimes legal, sometimes less so. Trump insisted that he is "good at mathematics" and that he might just slap a 100%, or 200%, or even 2,000% tariff on imported automobiles. He also said that "tariff" is "the most beautiful word in the dictionary."
  
  
• Micklethwait pointed out that Trump's economic plan would add a projected $7 trillion to the national debt. Trump crossed his arms across his chest, glowered, and said that The Wall Street Journal (source of that projection) and Bloomberg are always wrong about everything.
  
  
• In response to a question about whether he would break up Google, Trump said:

  I just haven't gotten over something that the Justice Department did yesterday where Virginia cleaned up its voter rolls and got rid of thousands and thousands of bad votes. And the Justice Department sued them, that they should be allowed to put those bad votes and illegal votes back in and let the people vote. So, I haven't gotten—I haven't gotten over that. A lot of people have seen that and I can't believe it.

  Well, that certainly clears things up, doesn't it? Micklethwait steered the discussion back to Google a second time, and a third, and eventually Trump said he would do "something."
  
  
• Micklethwait observed that deporting millions of immigrants would wreck the U.S. economy. He was referring to the loss of cheap, blue-collar labor, but he could just as well have been talking about the costs of implementing the scheme, which could literally run into the trillions if Trump tried it. The former president responded by saying that if the U.S. doesn't deport the immigrants, they will murder lots of Americans, very possibly including some of the people in the audience for the interview (it was held at the Economic Club of Chicago). He even picked out an audience member—an attractive woman, naturally—and warned her that she might well be the one to be killed.
  
  
• Trump was asked about cutting government spending, and said he planned to put Elon Musk in charge of that (obviously, Jared Kushner is too busy "managing" Saudi wealth these days). When asked for a specific idea for reducing government outlays, he said that he would reduce the cost of building the new Air Force One planes. It is true that the planes have a $3-$4 billion price tag. It is also true that is a grain of sand as compared to the federal budget.
  
  
• Micklethwait inquired about Bob Woodward's claim that Trump has been talking to Vladimir Putin. Trump did not answer, but asserted that it would be "smart" if he was doing so.
  
  
• And finally, the misstep that should probably get the widest play came when Trump talked about autoworkers, the same autoworkers he ostensibly wants to protect with tariffs. The former president said that many autoworkers take parts "out of a box and they assemble them" and that "we could have a child do it." He was sorta trying to draw a distinction between American-made cars, and cars that are of foreign origin but are assembled in America. However, he did not do a good job of it.

Incidentally, if you would like to see a premium example of so-called "sanewashing," read The Hill's writeup of the interview. You'd have virtually no idea that there was anything abnormal going on. We have no idea what the author was watching. Or smoking.

Trump's interview has already had at least one effect, and possibly two. The definite one involves the price of stock in his the-numbers-just-don't-add-up social media company. We intended to write an item yesterday about how amazingly well the stock was doing, and then we held it because we ran out of time. That was lucky, because the price plunged after the interview. At the moment Trump stepped on stage, the share price was $32.74. An hour after the interview was over, the price was down to $25.16 a share (before rallying a bit at the end of the day, to $27.06). We think the lesson here is that while it would be very interesting if the stock price was a proxy for Trump's presidential chances, clearly it isn't. At least, not in anything other than a very crude way. The interview was bad, but his chances of becoming president did not drop by nearly 25% in a couple of hours.

The (possible) second effect is that Trump canceled yet another high-profile interview. He already bailed on 60 Minutes, and yesterday, CNBC's Squawk Box joined the list. He was supposed to appear on that show on Friday, but his campaign says that he just has to be in Michigan that day. This raises two obvious questions: (1) The campaign didn't know Trump's schedule when they made the booking? and (2) They don't have phones or video uplinks in Michigan?

We're going to conclude here with an observation that seems painfully obvious, but that we will make nonetheless: When Joe Biden started botching some public appearances, and canceling others, everyone was screaming that he was no longer fit to be president, and that he needed to step aside immediately. Well, Trump keeps botching public appearances (and, we would say, far worse than Biden did), while avoiding others. Is there any other conclusion than "Trump is not mentally and physically fit enough to serve, and needs to step aside?" We are happy to hear the counterargument (send messages to comments@electoral-vote.com), if readers have one, but we just don't see how someone—regardless of their politics—can be a Biden skeptic, but also be OK with what we are seeing from Trump these days. (Z)