What Trump is actually saying in his recent campaign appearances

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Former President Donald Trump’s recent campaign appearances have generated an odd mix of headlines.

These include his worrisome promise to use the US military against his political opponents, whom he called “the enemy from within.”

There’s also the transformation of a staged town hall into a strange 39-minute music listening session that some supporters have said was inspiring but looked very awkward to those paying attention on TV.

While Trump has pulled out of interviews with CBS’ “60 Minutes” and with CNBC, he has taken some questions elsewhere. It’s worth looking a little more broadly at what exactly Trump is saying as the endgame of the presidential election approaches. It shows a man who veers from thought to thought, has an exceptionally high opinion of his abilities, does not think there are any experts who know more than him and would use the power of the presidency in unprecedented ways.

The below quotes will feel long, but Trump has a tendency to make points in a meandering stream of consciousness he calls “the weave.”

Trump was excited to get a question on Tuesday on the issue of in vitro fertilization during a Georgia town hall on the Fox News program, “The Faulkner Focus,” that featured only women in the audience.

Trump went on to say that he and Republicans were totally in favor of IVF, not mentioning that many anti-abortion-rights activists oppose the procedure. He said Democrats’ attempts to say IVF would be in danger on his watch are wrong. But despite viewing himself as the “father of IVF,” he did say he needed it explained to him after Alabama’s Supreme Court suspended access to the procedure in that state. The legislature later restored access.

Trump was asked by a woman in the Fox town hall about what he’ll do for mothers like her who have seen the child tax credit shrink in recent years. Neither the Fox host nor Trump mentioned that, after the tax credit was increased by Trump’s tax bill, Democrats further increased it temporarily during the Covid-19 pandemic. It’s likely that the expiration of that temporary pandemic extension is what the woman felt go away.

Trump also didn’t mention that his own individual tax measures are expiring next year. Everyone expects some kind of extension, but Trump’s answer, which harkened back to his 2017 tax cut law, was not an endorsement of an across-the-board increase.

Trump’s supporters have argued that when he talked about using the military inside the US, he was answering a question on Sunday from Maria Bartiromo of Fox News about Chinese migrants and data that suggests thousands of people with criminal records have come across the US border and whether there will be a peaceful Election Day.

Note: Bartiromo’s question is flawed. There’s absolutely no indication of an army of migrants trying to disrupt Election Day. None. But Trump said there’s a bigger threat.

Later, Bartiromo came back to this idea and asked how Trump will “guard against the bureaucrats undermining you in a second term.” Trump made clear that when he’s talking about “the enemy from within,” he’s talking about Democrats and his political opponents.

Well, they’re going to undermine – well, I always say, so, we have two enemies. We have the outside enemy, and then we have the enemy from within. And the enemy from within, in my opinion, is more dangerous than China, Russia and all these countries, because if you have a smart president, he can handle them pretty easily. I handled – I get along great with all of them. I handled them. But the thing that’s tougher to handle are these lunatics that we have inside, like Adam Schiff, Adam “Shifty” Schiff … who’s a total sleazebag, is going to become a senator. But I call him the enemy from within. When you look at the danger he put our country in potentially with Russia with a phony, made-up deal that he made up with Hillary and some bad people, that was – that started off as an excuse for why she lost an election that a lot of people thought she should have won, because the polls indicated she might win.

He doesn’t think handing out tax cuts would add $7.5 trillion to the national debt

Bartiromo did ask Trump a good question about his economic proposals, which is full of tax cuts for seniors, wage earners, car buyers and more. “How will you pay for it?” she asked, noting the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget said his tax plan would add $7.5 trillion to the national debt.

Bartiromo noted that The Wall Street Journal concluded Trump’s plans would increase the debt more than Vice President Kamala Harris’ proposals would. Trump says his plan for across-the-board tariffs, which are taxes on imports, will spark a domestic manufacturing boom. He says foreign companies will pay the tariffs rather than importers and consumers, which economists say is false.

Bartiromo noted that The Journal and others have said the prices just get passed on to consumers. Trump said his goal is not to drive up prices but to make it so expensive for Chinese exports – perhaps a 500% tariff – that no Chinese company will sell a single car in the US. Details are still in the works. Even Bartiromo was confused.

BARTIROMO: So, your thinking is, is the threat of a 200% tariff will stop them from taking the car?

TRUMP: Sure, of course.

BARTIROMO: So you won’t actually have to do it, so you’re not going to actually push prices higher? That’s your thinking?

TRUMP: Of course. I never – until now, I said 200. I’m using that just as a figure of speech.

BARTIROMO: But you say 200 a lot.

TRUMP: Oh, I will say – well, I will say 100, 200. I will say 500. I don’t care. They’re not going to bring cars into this country …

BARTIROMO: I see.

It was not as friendly of an interview on Tuesday in Chicago when Trump took questions from Bloomberg editor-in-chief John Micklethwait. Trump was again asked about the trillions The Wall Street Journal and others say his tax proposals would add to the debt, and the former president said experts on the economy are all wrong.

Rejecting data and expertise is a theme with Trump. It could be jobs data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, crime data from the FBI or just about anything he doesn’t agree with.

Trump also said that while a president shouldn’t have full leeway to raise or lower interest rates, he should get more sway with the Federal Reserve if he’s elected because he’s “better” than Fed Chair Jerome Powell.

The journalist Bob Woodward reports in a new book that Trump has been in periodic contact with Russian President Vladimir Putin since leaving office. Trump wouldn’t tell Micklethwait if he’d talked to Putin or not. But so what, in his opinion?

TRUMP: Well, I don’t comment on that. But I will tell you that if I did, it’s a smart thing. If I’m friendly with people, if I have a relationship with people, that’s a good thing, not a bad thing, in terms of a country. He’s got 2,000 nuclear weapons and so do we. China has a lot less but they’ll catch us within five years.

MICKLETHWAIT: That sounds …

TRUMP: If I have a relationship …

MICKLETHWAIT: That sounds very much like …

TRUMP: … I don’t – I don’t talk about …

MICKLETHWAIT: … you did talk to him.

TRUMP: … I don’t talk about – no, I don’t talk about that. I don’t …

MICKLETHWAIT: You talk about …

TRUMP: I don’t ever say it.

MICKLETHWAIT: … talked to Netanyahu. You’ve talked to …

TRUMP: But I can tell you what, Russia has never had a president that they respect so much. But more importantly, or less importantly, I guess, I went into Russia and people said, oh he likes Putin and Putin likes him. Let me tell you, the first thing I did was terminated Nord Stream 2. Nobody ever heard of Nord Stream 2.

Trump won’t say if he still talks to Putin, but he does say that he stood up to Putin during his first term as president by spiking a pipeline that took natural gas from Russia to Europe, bypassing Ukraine. CNN’s Daniel Dale has fact-checked Trump’s claim in the past. Trump did approve the sanctions on companies working on the project, but only after he was essentially forced to by an overwhelmingly vote in Congress. It also occurred three years into his presidency. The pipeline was completed despite the sanctions but never began operating.

Micklethwait noted the US won World War II and the Cold War with help from allies and asked Trump how slapping tariffs on allies will help the US now.

Trump’s comments about Detroit have led to some political backlash since the city’s current renaissance is a point of pride for Michiganders, according to CNN’s report.

It’s a theme. In the Bartiromo interview, Trump said Harris gave “the dumbest answer I’ve ever heard” during her “60 Minutes” interview. He told both Bartiromo and Micklethwait variations of: “She is not as smart as Biden, if you can believe it.”

Republicans and Trump in particular attacked President Joe Biden’s mental acuity to the point that, after his befuddled debate performance against Trump in June, Biden, 81, dropped out of the race. Now that Harris is attacking Trump, 78, for his acuity, Trump is defending the ability of older people to hold positions of power.

Micklethwait asked Trump is he would appoint a 78-year-old as CEO of a company.

Trump acknowledged that having the dollar as the world’s currency is valuable to the US. He would keep it that way with threats and intimidation, his version of playing checkers.

And if you want to go to Third World – if you want to go to Third World status, lose your reserve currency. We have to have it. We cannot lose it. If you go to – you’ll go to Third World status in this country, because you take a look at the way things are running. If a country tells me, ‘Sir, we like you very much, but we’re going to no longer adhere to being in the reserve currency. We’re not going to salute the dollar anymore.’ I’ll say, ‘That’s OK, and you’re going to pay a 100% tariff on everything you sell into the United States, and we love your product. I hope you sell a lot of it into the United States, but you’re going to pay 100% tariff.’ He will then follow it up by saying, ‘Sir, it would be an honor to stay with the reserve currency.’ I will be – that will be like just playing – that’s not even chess; that’s checkers.

January 6 was a day of ‘love and peace’

Trump takes no responsibility for his supporters trying to disrupt the counting of electoral votes on January 6, 2021. Despite all of the video that shows thousands of supporters storming the Capitol, Trump buys into false conspiracy theories that something “strange” was happening to instigate them. He also thinks it was a very small number of people who overwhelmed Capitol Police.

Trump also argued the transfer of power in 2021 was peaceful.

To which Micklethwait said, “You had a peaceful transfer of power compared to Venezuela, but it was by far the worst peaceful transfer of power in a long time.” Accurate.

During an exchange on his mistrust of Google and the potential for breaking up the internet giant and his reversal on the need to ban TikTok, Trump said something interesting about the free press in the US. He was specifically asked if he still sees Chinese ownership of TikTok as a security threat.

I think it is a threat. I – I – frankly, I think everything’s a threat. There’s nothing that’s not a threat. But sometimes, you have to fight three of these threats. You know, you can’t just – like Google. I’m not a fan of Google. They treat me badly. But if you – are you going to destroy the company by doing that? If you do that, are you going to destroy the company? What you can do without breaking it up is make sure that it’s more fair. They do treat me very badly. Oh, and he told me no way. You’re the No. 1 person on all of Google for stories. I mean – which probably makes sense, to be honest with you. I hate (inaudible). Most of them are bad stories but these are minor details, right? Be – and it’s only bad because of the fake news, cause the news is really fake. We – that’s the one we really have to – straighten it – and we have to straighten out our press because we have a corrupt press.

If Trump’s answers seem long, they are. He hops from point to point, a hard-to-follow style he is proud of. At one point in the Bloomberg interview, Micklethwait tried to interrupt to ask a question as Trump pivoted from talking about the dollar to talking about the French president.

TRUMP: You’ve got to be able to finish a thought.

MICKLETHWAIT: Yeah.

TRUMP: Because it’s very important. You know, this is big stuff we’re talking about. You can’t go that quickly.

MICKLETHWAIT: You’ve gone from the dollar to (Emmanuel) Macron.

TRUMP: So let me just tell you – so I said – no, I’m just telling you basic – it’s – it’s called the weave. It’s all these different things happening.

He doesn’t think handing out tax cuts would add $7.5 trillion to the national debt

January 6 was a day of ‘love and peace’

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