TRUMP SAYS: “IF I SAY IT ON TWITTER, THE BASE WILL BELIEVE IT!”

… No one on the planet has the kind of power that this man has!

The Washington bureaucracy immediately went into action on Trump’s whim of a 10% tax cut.

It is amazing when you consider the latest comment from the president about a 10% tax cut to be announced before the mid-term elections..

No Washington officials, including those in his own administration, were aware of what the president was talking about…..?  The reality is that cutting taxes requires House legislation, and the US Congress is not scheduled to be back in session until after the Nov. 6 elections.

But, as usual, upon hearing the president’s comment, the Washington bureaucratic machinery immediately went into action.  It was instantly working to produce a policy to support Trump’s latest whim.

There is now a tax cut option under discussion by Trump’s administration officials.  It is a purely symbolic, nonbinding “resolution” as a signal to voters ahead of the elections.  The purpose of saying this before the mid-terms is to say that if Republicans hold their congressional majorities in the House, they "might" pass a future 10% tax cut for the middle class.

Sure enough, the House Ways and Means Committee Chairman, Kevin Brady (R-TX) says that he will work with the White House and the Treasury Department to develop a plan “over the coming weeks.”

This latest Trumpism idea has the federal government scrambling to reverse-engineer certain US policies, just to meet Trump’s latest promise.

It’s just like the time that Trump said he wanted to have a major military parade, and that he was going to launch a “Space Force”.

After he made those surprise announcements, the Defense Secretary and the  Pentagon leaped into action just to appease the president’s whims.

This was also in-line with a recent unsupported Trump claim that “unknown Middle Easterners” were part of the migrant caravan occurring in Central America.   When he said this, the Department of Homeland Security, the White House,  and even Vice President Pence, they all rushed to try to back up Trump’s statements.  But then later when asked, the president had to admit that there was no proof that there were individuals from the middle east in the caravan.

By the end of the same day of that statement, the White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders then told reporters that Trump “absolutely” has evidence that there are Middle Easterners in the caravan.  But the only so called “proof” was a statistic she pulled out of a hat that said “each day,10 suspected or known terrorists try to enter the United States illegally”.

And that’s supposed to be the proof of Middle Easterners in the Central American caravan?

It’s true, Trump’s claim was not about suspected terrorists specifically.  He and his administration just seemed to imply…again with no evidence…that his so called  hypothetical “Middle Easterners” may have intentions to commit terrorism.

Vice President, Mike Pence also tried to back up his boss’s claim, by ridiculously saying in a Washington Post Live interview that it is “inconceivable that there are not people of Middle Eastern descent in a crowd of more than 7,000 people advancing toward our border.” 

Really, inconceivable?

But hours later, Trump admitted to reporters during an Oval Office event that he has no evidence to support the claim about middle easterners in the caravan.

“There’s no proof of anything,” Trump said, “but there could very well be.”

And the moon could be made of cream cheese.

“Virtually no one on the planet has the kind of power that a president of the United States has to scramble bureaucracies in the service of a whim,” said Kathleen Jamieson, director of the Annenberg Public Policy Center at the University of Pennsylvania. “

Daniel Effron, a professor of organizational behavior at London Business School who studies the psychology of lies, he said political leaders such as Trump can make falsehoods seem true through imagination and constant repetition.  “When falsehoods feel familiar, one concern is you don’t actually know what’s true and what’s false,” Effron said. “There’s a lot of information to keep track of, and you use familiarity as a cue to what’s true. The other concern is when you’re invited to imagine how something could be true, you actually know that it’s false, but you don’t necessarily think it’s unethical to say.”

Simon Blackburn, is a retired philosophy professor at the University of Cambridge and the author of the book titled: “Truth”.  Blackburn said, “If you control the agenda efficiently, and there’s no possibility of an independent inquiry, I think that’s what Trump is a genius at.”

Trump has a pattern of getting his aides off guard with random policy announcements. 

These policies are rooted more in his imagination and desires, than any organized administration initiative.

Trump has issued these surprise directives publicly when he believes his subordinates are not pushing his agenda forcefully enough, or that they aren’t taking his wishes seriously. “He thinks, ‘Hey, if I say it to the millions on Twitter, then these guys will have to follow,’” this Trump statement was of course provided by a former White House official, who only spoke on the condition of anonymity.

Though the president has a tremendous capacity to create his own reality, the real challenge is in the execution of his reality.

“It is infeasible to say they’re going to have a middle-class tax cut before the November elections unless Congress agrees to come back into session,” Kathleen Jamieson said. “But there is a sense of reality about it when someone describes it in the terms that Trump described it. That is, no Republicans will show independence and stand up and say, ‘No, we haven’t,’ ‘No, we aren’t,’ or ‘No, we won’t.’ ”

That is very true, as most Republicans in Congress are afraid to say no to President Trump.

By the virtue of his position, the Council of Economic Advisers, Chairman Kevin Hassett would probably would have to be involved in crafting administration policy on taxes. Yet Hassett told reporters that he could not answer their questions on the matter.

“Right now, the person who’s discussing the 10% tax cut for the White House is the president,” Hassett said, “and so you should go to the press office and to the president if you want more information on that.”

The reality is that a 10% tax cut is a figment of Trump’s warped imagination, and it was only stated just to tell his voters to elect GOP candidates so that Trump can keep the House.

Good luck with that on November 6th.

Copyright G. Ater  2018