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The Words of a Shameless Liar Are Worth Nothing

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This should be an obvious point, but given the number of people who seem to think that there will be major tension between the agendas of Trump and Congress, wonder if he can be worked with on infrastructure, etc. etc. it is really worth making:

My best guess is that Trumpian governance will end up looking more like the boilerplate conservative policy currently populating the White House website than like the feisty populism of the inaugural address. It’s possible, of course, that I’ll be wrong. Like everyone else I know who covers politics, I’ve had the chance to be wrong about a lot over the past two years.

But the fact remains that to an unusual extent for a politician, what Trump says is a poor guide to what he will do.

Thousands of people believed that Trump University would not claim Trump was hand-picking instructors unless he was, in fact, hand-picking instructors. On the one hand, they probably thought a successful businessman would value a reputation as a man of his word. On the other hand, they may have believed the legal system would protect them from fraudulent claims. In reality, Trump routinely stiffs contractors who work for him and wound up paying out an enormous fraud settlement over the university.

Every politician I’ve ever heard of sometimes says things that aren’t true. No politician that I’m familiar with has such an extensive background of fundamentally misrepresenting himself as Trump does.

The watchword for covering the Trump era ought to be watch what he does, not what he says.

The Trump Show is a macabre, fascinating, appalling, thrilling spectacle. But as far as we know, its relationship to the Trump administration is tenuous and ambiguous. The show is a show. The administration will impact the lives of hundreds of millions of people.

What politicians say is actually normally a pretty reliable guide to what they’re going to try to do, another political science generality that is not applicable to Trump. I’ll return to this point when discussing a longer piece I have coming out, but it seems clear to me that the domestic agenda will be set by Ryan and McConnell, and I see no reason to think that Trump will intentionally interfere with what they want to do. And, at a minimum, his populist feints mean absolutely nothing. I mean, if you think there’s the slightest chance Trump will renegotiate drug prices to benefit consumers, you are the sucker.

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