Donald Trump just doubled his trouble
Last week, Donald Trump agreed to an interview on Sean Hannity, one of the few pundits who’s still unfailingly loyal to him, even while his own network is facing lawsuits due to a problem the Trump administration made worse. It was meant to give him a boost more than anything else – to at least give him an hour with an audience that fawns over him even if it did absolutely nothing to boost his performance with middle of the road voters that he would need to win re-election. Somehow, Trump even managed to bomb that interview though – caught unprepared when he was asked softball questions like what he would accomplish in his second term if re-elected.
Not only was he unable to answer, he ended up ranting about John Bolton and experience, making it clear to anyone even slightly on the fence about voting for Trump that the guy hasn’t been doing anything besides sleeping in and watching television for the last three years. He doesn’t even think all that much about the job he was elected to do. Fully aware of this, Chuck Grassley angrily rebuked Hannity for making Trump look bad, but you’d think Grassley would make sure Donald Trump had something to say in case this question ever came up again.
On Wednesday, Trump was interviewed by Eric Bolling of Sinclair Media who offered him a do-over of last week’s question. Sinclair is even more Trump-friendly territory than Fox News, and yet Donald Trump still managed to screw up his answer. At first, he just repeated his campaign promise of “making America great again,” but then he rambled through a word salad even longer than when he appeared on Hannity, muttering about rebuilding manufacturing and the military, as if trying to re-enact one of his rallies.
It might be one thing if this was just a bungled interview with a friendly interviewer, but the bigger picture isn’t much better. Even at his Tulsa rally, for example, he didn’t mention any policy goals he has for a second term, and his campaign website no longer has a section on policy. It isn’t just Trump who’s short on ideas, so is the whole campaign.
James Sullivan is the assistant editor of Brain World Magazine and an advocate of science-based policy making