It was a scene of “American carnage,” Trump explained. With him in charge, we would “start winning again, winning like never before.” We would be “unstoppable.” His presidency would make us “strong,” “wealthy,” “proud,” and “safe” again. The carnage would end. Those of us watching the event on the West Front of the US Capitol Building were perplexed. This was a moment to unite and inspire. But his remarks were resentful and foreboding. Looking back, I find it oddly fitting that the very moment he started speaking it began to rain.
Ironically, his grim portrayal of America will be among the more eloquent statements in President Trump’s Public Papers because he read what he was handed. As we know, he usually speaks less cogently. He meanders off script, focusing on a main idea only in fits and starts, and revels in distractions, especially broadsides against his critics. This is a constant annoyance for aides who spend time crafting speeches so his words are more artful and less offensive. He often scraps those prepared remarks on the spot, allowing us to hear from the real Donald Trump—a man whose natural oratory is crude and mean spirited.
Why does this matter? Because words matter. As a student of history, I’ve always believed a president’s words are especially important because he (and one day, she) speaks for all of us. They shape how we engage with one another and how we meet the country’s needs. They influence the way we address challenges and how we cooperate within the same government. A leader’s words become the rallying cries for our shared causes, from what we stand against (“No taxation without representation!”) to what we stand for (“We choose to go to the moon in this decade!”). Unfortunately, Trump’s words don’t foster national civility. They corrode it.
His words sound more like those of a two-bit bartender at a rundown barrelhouse than a president. At any given event, Trump might praise someone who assaulted a journalist: “Any guy that can do a body slam, he’s my kind of—he’s my guy.” He might lambast his opponents as “low testosterone” or “low IQ.” Or he might mock a sexual-assault accuser’s testimony, mimicking her voice and the lawyer questioning her: “I had one beer. How did you get home? I don’t remember. How’d you get there? I don’t remember. Where is the place? I don’t remember. How many years ago was it? I don’t know. I don’t know. I don’t know. I don’t know… But I had one beer. That’s the only thing I remember.” He writes off her accusation as false.
Most notably, President Trump’s Papers will be filled with the pugilistic social media commentary that has dominated our public conversations. Future historians will need only to throw a dart at the calendar to find the vitriol. Let’s say April 1, 2018. That week his Papers will record that the president blasted ABC News, CBS, CNN, MSNBC, NBC, and the Washington Post (all individually) as “fake news”; blamed online retailer Amazon for stores closing “all over the country”; ridiculed the “money-losing” US Postal Service; mocked former US trade negotiators as “foolish, or incompetent”; denounced Mexico on immigration and threatened to cut off their “cash cow, NAFTA”; lamented his own Justice Department and FBI as “an embarrassment to our country”; and rounded it off by deriding his predecessor as “Cheatin’ Obama.”
That “April Fools” week was not special for any reason. It was like every week. The overall volume of the president’s sensationalist rhetoric is astounding, and it will all be archived for posterity, showing Donald Trump to be the least articulate president of all time. It’s not just that his style of communicating is rambling or contentious. It’s that he’s laid waste to public decency. During the presidential debates, Trump told us not to elect Hillary Clinton—“Such a nasty woman,” he said of her. Well, he got it his way, and instead we ended up with a nasty man.
Not a single day goes by that President Trump’s outrageous statements don’t confound someone on his team, if not all of us. I know other administrations dealt with this every once in a while. Obama’s cabinet officials complained quietly that their boss would talk an issue to death and couldn’t make up his mind. Bush aides winced at the president’s foot-in-mouth moments. However, I also know that none of them had to deal with these frustrations on a daily basis.
Past presidential appointees didn’t have to wake up each morning to discover, in a full-blown panic, that the president woke up before them and was making wild and vulgar pronouncements to the world. When you bump into former officials in the course of Washington business, they ask what it’s like to operate in this type of environment. I’ll tell you. It’s like showing up at the nursing home at daybreak to find your elderly uncle running pantsless across the courtyard and cursing loudly about the cafeteria food, as worried attendants try to catch him. You’re stunned, amused, and embarrassed all at the same time. Only your uncle probably wouldn’t do it every single day, his words aren’t broadcast to the public, and he doesn’t have to lead the US government once he puts his pants on.
Donald Trump’s words do more than drive his team crazy. They are dividing Americans. He may start fights on Twitter and at the microphones, but we are continuing them at home. Political differences between Americans are now at record highs. Studies show that Republicans are becoming more partisan, unwilling to veer from the party line, and Democrats are doing the same. The one thing the two sides can agree on is that the phenomenon is real. A Pew Research Center survey released in 2019 found that a whopping 85 percent of US adults said that “political debate in the country has become more negative and less respectful,” and two-thirds said it is less focused on the issues. Where do they pin the blame? A majority believed President Trump “has changed the tone and nature of political debate for the worse.”
The verbal acrimony has real-world consequences. Our divisions make us less likely to engage with one another, less likely to trust our government, and less optimistic about our country’s future. When asked to look outward to the year 2050, Americans were deeply pessimistic, according to another survey. A majority of respondents predicted the United States would be in decline, burdened by economic disparity and more politically polarized. Nearly the same percentage of Democrats and Republicans agreed on the last point.
In the nation’s capital, the president’s bull-in-a-china-shop language is inhibiting his own agenda. He can’t get consensus on Capitol Hill, even on previously uncontroversial issues, because his style has alienated potential partners on both sides. Democrats aren’t exactly trying to restore bipartisanship, but there might be more hope if the figurehead of the Republican Party were not treating them as mortal enemies rather than political opponents. Instead, every big idea becomes radioactive upon release. Every line of the budget is a trench on the political battlefield. We constantly struggle to sell the president’s priorities because he is his own worst enemy. Just when it seems like there is a breakthrough behind the scenes on a tough issue, the president might blow it up by verbally assailing the person we’re negotiating with or changing his position.
For instance, there was the time we’d painstakingly sketched the broad outlines of a nearly $2 trillion agreement with the Democrats to repair America’s aging infrastructure. Fixing America’s roads and bridges is a popular, bipartisan policy and could have been a slam dunk for Donald Trump, who is an actual builder and understands the issue. Many of us in the administration cared about it. Trump claimed he did, too. Then the president, angry at what he’d seen on cable news, walked into a White House meeting with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, threw away his talking points, and said he couldn’t work with them until they stopped investigating his administration. They didn’t get a word in edgewise. He stormed out to the Rose Garden after a few minutes and angrily told reporters that Democrats couldn’t “investigate and legislate simultaneously” and that they needed to “get these phony investigations over with” before he’d talk. Prospects for an infrastructure pact vanished in an instant. Next time you’re stuck in traffic or on a pothole-ridden federal highway, remember this episode.