I haven't been paying a whole lotta attention to Donald Trump lately but he makes it so damned difficult. Going on prime-time TV tonight with an address from the Oval Office? Well, I don't suppose he'll say anything that fact-checkers will be identifying as false afterwards.
But I keep thinking how tough it must be on those who work for this guy. Sarah Huckabee Sanders has the job of going out and saying what she's told to say, and if Trump claims that he personally has been to Saturn, she has to find some way to spin that as something other than a lie on his part. Tough way to make a buck.
And take a look at what Mike Pence had to say this morning. On Friday, Trump said of his border-wall proposal, "This should have been done by all of the presidents that preceded me. And they all know it. Some of them have told me that we should have done it." He says stuff like that without thinking or caring that reporters are going to check with all the surviving ex-presidents to find out who said that, exactly what they said, when they said it, etc.
They checked. Through spokespersons or on their own, all four living ex-presidents insisted they said no such thing. In theory, George H.W. Bush could have said that to Trump before he died but everyone knows he hated Trump, and Trump wasn't smart enough to attribute the alleged remark to the one ex-president in recent times who isn't around to deny it.
So now you're Mike Pence. You go on the Today Show this morning and you're asked by NBC White House Correspondent Hallie Jackson, "Which former presidents told President Trump, as he said, that he should have built a wall?" How do you respond to that? Here's what Pence said…
I know the President has said that that was his impression from previous administrations, previous presidents. I know I've seen clips of previous presidents talking about the importance of border security, the importance of addressing the issue of illegal immigration.
Okay. So previous presidents saying on the news that we should address the issue of illegal immigration is kind of the same thing as them personally telling Trump they should have built this wall of his that is so unplanned and vague that even he doesn't know if it'll be made out of concrete or steel or uncooked lasagna noodles. That was the best the Vice-President could do within the parameters of what he was allowed to say.
In more and more ways, Trump reminds me of a couple of producers I've known who would go to the network and promise anything — A-N-Y-T-H-I-N-G — to sell a show. One in particular I'm thinking of would say, "I can get Sean Connery, Roger Moore and all the other James Bonds to come out, strip to their skivvies and perform a Chippendale's dance routine" without the slightest thought as to to how he was going to deliver on that promise. Making the sale at that moment was all that mattered. If they did buy the show, his next challenge would be to convince the network that getting Charles Nelson Reilly to come on in shorts was pretty much the same thing.
So tonight, Trump's going to go on TV and make his case for why anyone who opposes The Wall is for open borders at a time when thousands of terrorists are streaming in from Mexico to kill us all. Then Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer — two of the most boring speakers in politics today — will deliver a rebuttal, perhaps hampered by the problem that they probably won't get Trump's prepared text in advance and he might not stick to it anyway.
I think Trump's on the ropes on this issue but if the Democrats really want to finish him off, they shouldn't send Pelosi or Schumer. They should get Seth Meyers to do it. He will…tomorrow night and it'll be much more effective.