I'm trying to restrict my thinking about Donald Trump to fifteen minutes a day. Even that's probably too much because nothing I think, say or do is going to change anything. I feel certain that voters, en masse, will change things and I suspect there are investigators and law enforcement officials and, yes, even Congresspeople who believe in oversight who will change things. I am not, however, in those last three job descriptions.
A friend of mine called yesterday and wanted to discuss Trump and I said, "I'm sorry. I've already used up the fifteen minutes I am willing to spare today for that topic. Everything else I have to do today, including rearranging my sock drawer, is more important. Especially rearranging my sock drawer."
And what I was thinking in yesterday's fifteen minutes — and I'll take today's fifteen minutes to write it out here — is that I believe we overthink Donald Trump. We try to understand a mind that is way simpler than we expect to find in someone who becomes that famous and that powerful. All Donald Trump cares about is Donald Trump: The wealth of Donald Trump, the fame of Donald Trump, the crowds cheering Donald Trump…
Oh, yeah — and Donald Trump staying out of legal trouble. He seems to be thinking more and more about that these days. He may have fifteen minutes a day when he's not thinking about that.
The other day, he said something really, really stupid and untrue about abortion. He said, as I'm sure you've read: "The baby is born. The mother meets with the doctor. They take care of the baby, they wrap the baby beautifully. And then the doctor and the mother determine whether or not they will execute the baby."
I assume I don't have to tell you why that's false or, at best, grossly misleading. But people are spending a lot of time arguing why he said that, what his agenda is, what he proposes to do to stop this crime as it exists in his imagination, etc. They're debating what he was thinking and my take is that he was thinking one thing and one thing only: "Hey, that's going to bring cheers from the kind of people who show up at my rallies."
He read it somewhere or he heard it somewhere and he knew it would thrill his devout followers and that's as far as it goes. Maybe somewhere down the line, he could get pressured into taking some action based on that false premise but when he says things, they're just things he says for immediate gratification. At some moment, he thinks it'll help him to promise a great new health plan or to praise Robert Mueller or to damn Robert Mueller or he loves Wikileaks or he never heard of Wikileaks or Mexico will pay for the wall or whatever it is.
Trump's like a guy I worked for once who would promise you a raise because he liked how nicely you'd treat him right after he said it. Later when you didn't get it and asked about it, it would be like, "What raise?" or even, "Oh, come on. You didn't really think I was going to give you a raise, did you?" He'd act genuinely astonished that you didn't understand that his words were just words and only of the moment. The only way to deal with someone like this is —
Oops. Sorry. Just looked at the clock and I've gone ten minutes over today's fifteen-minute allotment. Tomorrow, I'm only going to spend five minutes thinking about that man. Tomorrow's going to be a good day.