Trump Stories

Trump's message discipline vanishes a day after

convention
Updated 10:15 AM ET, Sat August 29, 2020

(CNN) - President Donald Trump and his rival Joe Biden presented two
alternate realities of the state of America at their conventions over the past
two weeks -- and the President's ability to persuade wavering moderates and
independents will hinge on his ability to stay on message.

But the restraint that Trump showed on Thursday night in an unusually muted
speech accepting the renomination of his party had vanished by the time he
touched down in Londonderry, New Hampshire, Friday night where he told
supporters — who were not socially distanced and booed when the public
address announcers asked them to wear masks — that he felt free to "wing
it."

After charging that Biden is "weak as hell" and an enabler of "rioters" and
"anarchists," Trump suggested that protesters in Washington, DC, who
surrounded and harassed Sen. Rand Paul as he left the White House on
Thursday night would have killed him if police had not intervened, and then
launched a baseless new attack on Kamala Harris at a time when he's facing
a historical deficit with women.

"Joe Biden is coming out of the basement, because the poll numbers have
totally swung -- they've totally swung," Trump said, mocking Biden's
announcement Thursday that he would be resuming campaign events after
Labor Day. "Sleepy Joe is coming out. ... Ten days! That's like an eternity in
Trumpville."

He told the crowd he'd like to see the first woman president, "but I don't want
to see a woman president get in to that position the way she'd do it" and
"she's not competent," he said, suggesting his daughter instead: "They're all
saying, 'We want Ivanka.' I don't blame you."

"We're going to win," Trump told the crowd outside an airplane hangar. "Does
anybody have any doubt?"
But there is. In fact, doubt remains about whether American voters will buy
what the President and Republicans tried to sell at their convention this week
— a whitewashed version of Trump's slow and inadequate response to a
pandemic that has killed more than 180,000 people and infected more than
5.9 million, and Trump's ludicrous claim that he has done more for Black
Americans than any president since Abraham Lincoln.

During the Democratic National Convention a week earlier, Biden and

Democrats asked American voters to take a harder look at the toll of the
nation's three coinciding crises: from the United States' unenviable position as
the leader in coronavirus cases around the globe; to the more than 22 million
jobs lost during the subsequent economic shutdown; to the chaos and
divisiveness of Trump's presidency, which has unfolded in the midst of a
national reckoning over systematic racism and police brutality.

Biden promised to lead voters out of the current moment of darkness back
into the light and to a sense of normalcy, while accusing Trump of creating a
climate of fear and shirking the responsibilities of his office while stoking hate
and division. In his convention speech, he said Trump had failed in his "most
basic duty" to the nation: "He has failed to protect us."

Biden has held a double digit lead over Trump throughout the summer as the
President's poor approval ratings on the coronavirus and race relations
created a strong drag on his numbers. But there are signs that the race is
tightening and that the economy is recovering at a faster clip than economists
initially expect. As Trump routinely points out, retail sales recently hit a record
high and the stock market has also been surging.

With scientists and epidemiologists still advising Americans to avoid crowds in

order to limit infection -- warnings that Trump mocked at his event Friday night
-- the former vice president has not been running a particularly vigorous
campaign in terms of in-person interactions, relying instead on social media,
advertising and virtual events to connect with voters.

Though Biden plans to step up his events in battleground states, some

Democrats are worried that he could lose his edge as Trump touches off a
robust schedule of campaigning to remind Americans that the economy was
roaring before the pandemic hit, while rewriting history on his response to the
virus.

In Londonderry Friday night, he suggested that China might have unleashed

the virus on purpose. He also said that his administration "saved millions of
lives" by banning foreign nationals from China from entering the United States
in January and shutting down the economy for several weeks.

"We could have had 2 million," he said, presumably referring to lives lost. "We
did everything right."

The economy under his administration is now "setting records" in terms of an

economic comeback, Trump said, and he went on to twist Biden's recent
statement in an ABC interview, where the former vice president said he would
shut down the economy if there was a second wave of the coronavirus and
scientists recommended the move.

"Biden wants to do a blanket shutdown," Trump claimed, adding that such a

move would lead to suicides, alcoholism and other afflictions.

He said the United States would have a great year next year "unless
somebody stupid gets elected and raises your taxes."

Trump tries to do damage control on race

The emphasis on appealing to Black voters during the convention this week
was an acknowledgement from Republicans both that the party sees a real
opportunity for Trump among Black male voters, and also that Trump needs to
do some image repairing after his race-baiting rhetoric.

Throughout much of the summer as Americans protested police brutality and

the death of George Floyd, Trump offered no semblance of leadership other
than an executive order aimed at addressing police misconduct, and inflamed
the debate by portraying the mostly peaceful protests as riots in the streets.
After several months, clear majorities of voters said he was making racial
tensions worse in this country.

This week he has tried to soften that image by highlighting his efforts on
criminal justice reform. On Friday, he announced the pardon of Alice Marie
Johnson, who was one of his most effective speakers at the convention this
week, after commuting her prison sentence two years ago.

Johnson, who had already served 21 years of a life sentence after being
convicted on charges of conspiracy to possess cocaine and attempted
possession of cocaine, has spoken movingly about the power of redemption.
But he then swerved back into his "law and order" message at the New
Hampshire rally, condemning the "thugs" who harassed guests leaving the
White House after his acceptance speech on the South Lawn.

Pushing his theme that mayors of Democrat-led cities are allowing crime and
violence to run rampant, he inexplicably blamed Washington Mayor Muriel
Bowser for the incident: "The DC police are good. ... The mayor should be
ashamed of herself with that kind of display of incompetence."

He called protesters "bad people" and "trouble makers" before claiming that
Paul, a Republican senator from Kentucky, and his wife would have been
beaten up or killed if the police had not escorted them away from the crowd.

For the first time on Friday night, Trump weighed in on the police shooting of
Jacob Blake, a 29-year-old Black man who was shot seven times in the back
Sunday by a White police officer in Kenosha, Wisconsin. Trump said he was
looking into the matter "very strongly."

"I'll be getting reports and I'll certainly let you know pretty soon," Trump told
WMUR in New Hampshire. "It was not a good sight. I didn't like the sight of it,
certainly, and I think most people would agree with that."

The Department of Justice has launched a civil rights probe into Blake's
shooting. White House chief of staff Mark Meadows said the probe came at
Trump's urging. Trump, however, was silent about the actions of a 17-year-old
vigilante, who shot a TikTok video from one of his rallies earlier this year and
has been charged with killing two protesters in Wisconsin during a protest
against the Blake shooting. The suspect in the case is claiming self-defense.

On Friday morning, Trump took credit for "success" in Kenosha in a tweet.

"Succes: Since the National Guard moved into Kenosha, Wisconsin, two days
ago, there has been NO FURTHER VIOLENCE, not even a small problem,"
Trump tweeted. "When legally asked to help by local authorities, the Federal
Government will act and quickly succeed. Are you listening Portland?"

The President was clearly trying to send a message to Democratic cities with
his Twitter posturing but the message he sent to voters was clear -- the Trump
who spoke from the South Lawn on Thursday was a one-night-only attraction.
Trump is the president of the loud minority, not silent
majority
Updated 11:00 AM ET, Sat August 29, 2020

(CNN) - I've spent a lot of time talking about the importance of the 50% mark
for former Vice President Joe Biden. Biden, unlike Hillary Clinton four years
ago, is consistently hitting and exceeding 50% in the polls, which means
President Donald Trump can't just count on late deciders to put him over the
top.

Trump, on the other hand, has never reached 50% in either his approval
rating or against his Democratic opponents in any live interview poll during the
last five years.

Now, there is obviously a chance Trump will eventually reach 50% against
Biden.

Visit CNN's Election Center for full coverage of the 2020 race

But if this streak continues for Trump, he will be the first president to never
reach 50% in any live interview poll in either his first successful campaign for
president, approval rating or his reelection bid.

This presidential cycle alone, there have been over 90 live interview national
polls since 2019. The highest Trump has gotten in any of these polls against
Biden has been 48% of the vote. The average has been 42%.

Compare that with Biden's average of 50.3%. Biden's hit 50% in a majority of
the polls. Unlike Trump, who has slipped below 40% a number of times,
Biden's never dropped below 40%.

Trump's inability to hit 50% is nothing new. There have been north of 700 live
interview polls that asked about Trump's approval rating during his
presidency. He reached 50% in none of these polls. The closest he's gotten is
49%. The average has been 40% or 41%, depending on how you count
tracking polls. He's often been below 40%.

Perhaps not surprisingly, Trump's average approval rating during his

presidency is very close to the average support he has earned against Biden
in the live interview polls.
You can also go back to Trump's race against Clinton in 2016. Again, he
never hit 50% in any live interview poll conducted during that entire campaign
and found himself below 40% many times. Trump ultimately ended up winning
the presidency with 46% of the vote nationally and fell short of a majority of
the vote in states containing a majority of the electoral votes.

Overall, we're talking over 1,000 live interview polls measuring Trump's
approval rating or standing against the other party's major nominee. Trump
has failed to reach a majority in any of them.

Not many presidential candidates manage to do that. Even many losers get to
50% at least at some point in some poll. Previous losers who did (such as
George McGovern in 1972) almost all lost by wide margins.

View 2020 presidential election polling

The only winning candidate since 1940 to never hit 50% in any horse race poll
was Richard Nixon in 1968. The 1968 election, of course, featured the strong
third party candidacy of George Wallace.

Unlike Trump, Nixon actually won the popular vote. Further, Nixon would
easily meet and exceed 50% in his approval rating and in his reelection
matchup against McGovern.

There's simply no record of any president failing to reach at least 50% once in
their approval rating. The majority of presidents actually average at least 50%
approval during their first term.

No president I know of who ran for another term didn't hit at least 50% in one
poll at some point against their opponent. This includes even the losers like
Jimmy Carter in 1980 and George H.W. Bush in early 1992 polls against Bill
Clinton.

Whether Trump continues to fall short of 50% nationally is still a question

mark. One remarkable thing to consider is that Trump's chances of winning
the presidency without winning the popular vote are about equal to his
chances of winning a majority of the popular vote.

If Trump manages to win another term in office, there's a good chance that a
majority of Americans still oppose him.
Trump campaign seeks post-convention bounce after
rough stretch
Updated 8:13 AM ET, Sat August 29, 2020

(CNN) - Standing mask-less last week at the counter of Arcaro & Genell
Takeaway Kitchen in Old Forge, Pennsylvania -- "Pizza Capital of the World"
-- President Donald Trump found himself, for the first time in a long time, in
the role of retail politician.

"Why did you want to come here?" someone asked.

"Because they have great pizza," the President replied, lifting open a box top
and holding the pie aloft.

The world-altering circumstances of the coronavirus pandemic have also

altered the world of Trump's campaign. His poll numbers sank to historic lows.
The charging economy that once formed the centerpiece of his reelection
argument has stalled. And the arenas where his fans jammed shoulder-to-
shoulder stand vacant.

It's why Trump, who for most of his presidency has avoided interacting with
voters on their turf, found himself posing with a box of steaming hot pizza on
the day Joe Biden officially became the Democratic nominee.

"You look forward to the day it comes down?" he asked the pizzeria's
manager when he noticed the plexiglass barrier separating staff from
customers -- a Covid-era requirement in Pennsylvania and many other states
for businesses to reopen. "Me too."

If this week's Republican National Convention offered a view of Trump's

presidency that buffed away the flaws -- an alternate world where crowds
gathered without masks and the pandemic was mostly referenced in the past
tense -- the coming days and weeks will amount to a return to Earth. Trump
remains a candidate still trailing in polls, confronting a virulent pandemic and
struggling to offer rationale for a second term.

The reality started setting in less than 24 hours after Trump spoke: his
fireworks and opera-capped acceptance speech garnered a smaller television
audience than Biden's by more than 2 million viewers.
The next critical campaign juncture comes in a month, when Trump will face
Biden for their first televised debate in Cleveland. While aides have already
begun preparing the President for the showdown, it remains an open question
whether he'll adhere to their strategy -- or, like four years ago, tell advisers
he's relying on instinct.

Looking at a daunting electoral map showing Trump trailing Biden in several

states he won handily in 2016, Trump's advisers are hoping a post-convention
bounce will erode Biden's steady lead and make the race more competitive
heading into the fall. Trump was in a jubilant mood Friday after his speech,
according to three people who spoke with him.

But Trump is entering the final stretch of the campaign in an historically bad
place. A CNN poll of polls average heading into the national political
conventions found 51% of registered voters nationwide backed Biden while
42% supported Trump.

Both the President and his advisers insist their data show him more
competitive than public polling, particularly in the critical battlegrounds that will
determine the next president. But their confidence is belied somewhat by
Trump's increasing predictions of a fraudulent election, which he says
Democrats will win only through cheating.

On the road

As the general election enters its final months, Trump plans to travel several
times a week for a mix of official stops and scaled-down campaign events,
people familiar with the plans said.

Like Friday night's event in New Hampshire, most will occur inside airport
hangars, where attendees are partially outdoors -- considered safer from a
contagion perspective -- and where Trump can come and go easily.

Trump's advisers, hoping to look on the bright side, have sold the events to
the President as a nimbler version of his preferred rallies that can be
scheduled quickly, filled to relative capacity and allow for last-minute changes
depending on the current political calculus.

Aides say he could also throw in more retail politicking of the type he practiced
in Pennsylvania, though Trump himself does not particularly enjoy it and has
questioned its value, people who have spoken to him said. When he visited
the pizza shop in Pennsylvania, he didn't stop to greet any voters and was
gone after less than 10 minutes.

The campaign's geographic focus over the next few weeks are states
beginning to mail absentee ballots to voters, according to advisers. North
Carolina begins sending ballots on September 4, and both Trump and Vice
President Mike Pence plan to visit the state next week.

Several other battlegrounds -- including Minnesota, Pennsylvania and

Wisconsin -- also begin mailing ballots more than 45 days before the election.
Stops in those places are also being planned, but without the massive
campaign rallies Trump once hoped to be headlining for much of the fall,
advisers said.

While Trump has bitterly complained about mail-in voting, many states do not
make a distinction between "mail-in ballots" and "absentee ballots." Trump
has encouraged his supporters to request absentee ballots, including in a
video that showed him filling out his own ballot in Florida''s recent
congressional primary.

Preparing for a face-off

Over a month out from their first face-off -- set for September 29 at Case
Western Reserve University in Cleveland -- Trump and Pence have already
started debate preparation. Both have held several sessions with a small
circle of aides, people familiar with the matter said, though some said the
early sessions were mostly designed to channel Trump's attention toward the
showdown, which -- in the absence of major events -- is now the next major
campaign juncture.

Some of the President's advisers voiced concerns that his allies were overly
confident in their predictions that he would decimate Biden in the debates and
were unintentionally setting the bar too high for him to claim success.

Aides were surprised that Trump agreed to start debate prep this soon. In
2016, he was notoriously reluctant to hold formal mock debates and resisted
reading the binders of research compiled by aides. Instead, Trump preferred
to dial up an informal group of advisers and work on one-liners for his
opponents.

As he did in 2016, Trump sees the debates as the chance to shift his standing
while once again trailing in multiple polls. He has still downplayed the
necessity for practice debates, believing he doesn't require them to succeed
against Biden. Like in other types of preparatory briefings, he has
demonstrated a short attention span and little patience for extended
deliberations over strategy.

His practice sparring partner in 2016, former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie,
has participated in some of the early debate planning sessions with Trump,
according to people familiar with the matter, and some of Trump's advisers
assume he will reprise the role in some fashion this year, though a stand-in for
Biden hasn't yet been formalized.

Characteristically, Pence has been more methodical in his preparation. He is

holding his own prep sessions with aides, sources familiar said, as their re-
election effort has struggled to find a way to successfully define Sen. Kamala
Harris, the Democratic vice presidential nominee. Notably, Trump did not
mention her once during his convention acceptance speech at the White
House Thursday, though he did say Biden's name more than 40 times.

While Republicans South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem or Iowa Sen. Joni Ernst is
expected to play some role in helping Pence ready for his face-off with Harris,
the vice president is also expected to rely on familiar faces from the team that
prepared him for his debate in 2016 with Democratic Sen. Tim Kaine. Former
Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker, who played Kaine in previous mock debates, is
again expected to be involved.

The Trump campaign has requested that the candidates appear on stage with
one another during the debates in hopes of thwarting any attempt to conduct
the debates virtually. It's still unclear whether there will be an audience at any
of them.

Extending the message

Heading into the fall, Trump's advisers describe a messaging strategy that
works to extend the broad themes of their convention: framing Trump as a
"law and order" president who fights to improve the lives of working
Americans while also convincing voters he did not bungle the coronavirus
response and isn't a racist.

Trump's speech on Thursday, while delivered without much energy from a

teleprompter, did provide a road map for his planned attack on Biden as an
empty vessel of the far-left, a characterization that took months for Trump's
campaign to arrive at and which the President himself hasn't always stuck to.
The wide-ranging speech did not have a central theme, which aides said was
because so many speechwriters were involved as well as the chief
speechwriter -- Trump.

Biden's announcement Thursday that he planned to resume in-person

campaign events after Labor Day also impaired one of Trump's persistent
criticisms that his rival refused to leave his Wilmington, Delaware, basement.
Biden told supporters he planned to target Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Arizona
and Minnesota.

The type of voter Trump hopes to convince could be easily discerned by the
convention lineup: suburban White women, working class men and -- to an
extent -- Black men disillusioned by Democrats, though their role in the
convention lineup seemed designed as much to convince White voters that
Trump is not racist as it was to peel off Black voters from Biden.

"After Labor Day, you're going to see a really aggressive campaign all the way
through to the finish," the President's son-in-law and senior adviser Jared
Kushner said this week in a Politico interview.

"We know who the swing voters are and we've been testing over the last six
months a lot of the messages that help persuade them," Kushner said.
"Obviously times change, so you have to continue to be nimble."

The man in the hangar

Standing before small crowds without ever leaving the airport grounds is not
how Trump envisioned running for reelection. The President had long held out
hope that his signature arena rallies would be possible amid the pandemic,
but after an embarrassingly small turnout in Oklahoma earlier this summer he
came to acknowledge that his plans would require recalibration.

The Tulsa episode proved an edifying moment for both the President and his
campaign. Furious from before he left the White House until he returned late
at night, tie loose and exhausted, the President emerged from the experience
determined to never again find himself mocked for empty seats and entirely
vacant overflow areas.

Like his South Lawn convention spectacle, Trump's scaled-down rallies

harness the images of incumbency. Crowds wait with anticipation for Air Force
One to touch down, and watch as the iconic blue-and-white plane taxis into
place. In some instances they watch as Trump emerges from the forward
cabin and descends a set of air-stairs to his walkout song, "God Bless the
USA" by Lee Greenwood.

It's hardly the ethically dubious use of the South Portico as convention hall,
but the effect remains of projecting presidential power in a way his opponent
cannot. Like his predecessors, Trump often combines official and political
travel, which allows his campaign to pay only a portion of the travel costs with
taxpayers footing the remainder.

Being president also allows Trump to demonstrate leadership as part of his

official duties, such as a trip to survey storm damage in Louisiana and Texas
on Saturday and an upcoming White House signing ceremony for the
normalization agreement he helped broker between Israel and the United
Arab Emirates.

At the same time, Trump is holding out hope for a race-altering development:
a coronavirus vaccine, which he promised Thursday could come well before
the end of the year, a timeline health experts say is not realistic. Trump's zeal
to announce an effective vaccine already has medical experts concerned he
will rush an unproven product onto market.

What Trump hasn't necessarily contemplated is what a second term might

look like should his efforts pay off. He's struggled to define his second-term
priorities in interviews and during his convention acceptance speech on
Thursday he spent scarily any time laying out what he would like to
accomplish if reelection.

People around Trump say he is superstitious about projecting beyond the

election, believing it bad karma to presume victory.

Fresh off convention, Trump launches baseless attack

on Kamala Harris
Updated 3:00 AM ET, Sat August 29, 2020

Washington (CNN) - President Donald Trump told supporters at his campaign

rally on Friday night that Sen. Kamala Harris isn't competent enough to be the
Democrats' vice presidential nominee, suggesting that his daughter and
adviser, Ivanka Trump, would be a better candidate for such a role.
Speaking in Londonderry, New Hampshire, Trump made fun of the California
Democrat's failed 2020 presidential campaign and suggested that his
daughter, who is also a presidential adviser, would be a better vice
presidential contender.

"You know, I want to see the first woman president also, but I don't want to
see a woman president get into that position the way she'd do it -- and she's
not competent. She's not competent. They're all saying, 'We want Ivanka.' I
don't blame you," Trump said.

The attack on Harris came a day after the President wrapped the Republican
National Convention, which focused a large portion of its program on
convincing voters that he is kind to women and has worked on behalf of Black
Americans, messaging aimed at countering the President's history of racist
and sexist comments.

Harris, the first Black woman and the first South Asian American woman to
accept a major party's vice presidential nomination, has been a US senator
representing California since 2017. Previously, she was the California attorney
general and served as district attorney of San Francisco before that.

The President has a history of making disparaging remarks about African

Americans, including calling them "dumb" or "stupid" in public. He's
specifically referred to some Black journalists, including some from CNN, in
that way. He's told an Asian American reporter she should relax and keep her
voice down when asking questions.

Trump has also made a number of disparaging remarks about the intelligence
and appearance of women over the years. He said MSNBC anchor Mika
Brzezinski had a "low IQ." He said Arianna Huffington "is unattractive both
inside and out." He's called Harris and other women who oppose his policies
"nasty." And he's referred to women who live in suburbs as "housewives."
While most suburban women work, he's argued that it is a term they embrace.

Earlier this summer, polls showed that the gender gap -- the difference
between which party and candidate men and women support -- was at or near
historic highs and recent polls find Biden leading heavily with Black voters. But
in swing states, the addition of more Black votes could make a difference for
Trump.

The President seemed to suggest on Friday that his off-script comments

about Harris' competence were meant solely for his supporters -- not the
larger number of American households watching his heavily scripted
convention speech on television Thursday night.

After hearing pundits talk about how he had toned down his RNC speech,
Trump told rallygoers in New Hampshire, "Well, it's a different kind of a
speech. Tonight, I'm in New Hampshire and we can wing it."

"If I did last night's speech here, right now you would have all been walking
out," he added. "And if I did tonight's speech there, I would have been
criticized by being slightly radical."

Donald Trump's answer on what he would do in a 2nd

term is literally unintelligible
Updated 10:56 AM ET, Fri August 28, 2020

Washington (CNN) - On Thursday night, President Donald Trump accepted

the Republican presidential nomination for a second term. Twenty-four hours
earlier, he had a very hard time saying exactly what he would do with another
four years.

"But so I think, I think it would be, I think it would be very, very, I think we'd
have a very, very solid, we would continue what we're doing, we'd solidify
what we've done, and we have other things on our plate that we want to get
done," Trump told The New York Times' Peter Baker.

Yes, that's the quote. And no, it makes no sense.

Which really shouldn't surprise anyone paying attention. Trump has

repeatedly struggled to articulate why he wants a second term -- and what he
would do with it -- over these last few months.

Last month, in an interview with Fox News' Sean Hannity, Trump offered this
up when asked about four more years:

"One of the things that will be really great -- the word experience is still good, I
always say talent is more important than experience, I've always said that --
but the word experience is a very important word, a very important meaning.

"I never did this before, never slept over in Washington. I was in Washington
maybe 17 times and all of a sudden I'm the President of the United States,
you know the story, riding down Pennsylvania Avenue with our first lady and I
say this is great but I didn't know very many people in Washington, it wasn't
my thing. I was from Manhattan, from New York, and now I know everybody.
And I have great people in the administration. You make some mistakes, like
an idiot like Bolton, you don't have to drop bombs on everybody."

(Sidebar: That is 138 words of not answering the question.)

Then, days later, Eric Bolling, an anchor for conservative Sinclair

Broadcasting, gave Trump a second chance. Which he didn't take. Here's part
of how Trump answered Bolling's second term question:

"We're going to make America great again. We've rebuilt the military, we have
a ways to go. We've done things for the vets like nobody's ever seen. We can
do even more -- we did choice, as you know, we did accountability. What
we've done nobody's been able to do. But we have more to do...

"...At the end of our first term, it's going to be great, it would have been
phenomenal. We got hit with the plague. At the end of the second term, it's
going to be at a level that nobody will have ever seen a country. We're doing
it, whether it's trade, whether it's military -- all made in the USA, so important.
Made in the USA. ... We've got to bring back our manufacturing and I brought
it back very big, but we have to make our own pharmaceutical products, our
own drugs, prescription drugs."

Again, what? Trump's answers about his second term tend to be a recitation
of what he did in his first term -- and then sort of a vague promise to do, uh,
more of that. Or, in the words of Vice President Mike Pence at the Republican
convention on Wednesday night: "Make America Great Again. Again."

Trump has never been a big planner -- or someone who sees long-term. This
excerpt from "The Art of the Deal" is one of the most important passages to
understand both Trump and his approach to life -- and the presidency:

"Most people are surprised by the way I work. I play it very loose. I don't carry
a briefcase. I try not to schedule too many meetings. I leave my door open.
You can't be imaginative or entrepreneurial if you've got too much structure. I
prefer to come to work each day and just see what develops.

"There is no typical week in my life. I wake up most mornings very early,

around six, and spend the first hour or so of each day reading the morning
newspapers. I usually arrive at my office by nine, and I get on the phone.
There's rarely a day with fewer than fifty calls, and often it runs to over a
hundred. In between, I have at least a dozen meetings. The majority occur on
the spur of the moment, and few of them last longer than fifteen minutes. I
rarely stop for lunch. I leave my office by six-thirty, but I frequently make calls
from home until midnight, and all weekend long."

"I play it very loose."

"I prefer to come to work each day and just see what develops."

"I have at least a dozen meetings. The majority occur on the spur of the
moment, and few of them last longer than fifteen minutes."

Trump is -- and has always been -- far more reactive than proactive. He isn't
someone any sort of blueprint he is following or even a general sense of
where he would like a day/week/month/year of his presidency to wind up.
Things happen. He reacts. Then he reacts to the reaction. It's why Trump
loves Twitter so much; he can gauge reaction in real time and then respond
accordingly.

This approach, of course, has its downsides. Mostly that Trump's first term
has felt like a constant lurching between a panoply of issues and grievances
as opposed to any sort of steady attempt to push a few core principles or
policies. So, when Trump is asked about a second term, he's unable to come
up with any sort of cohesive answer -- descending instead into a sort of
laundry list of stuff he's done (or thinks he done) in his first four years.

The real answer of what a second Trump term would look like? Exactly like his
first term: Seat-of-the-pants decision-making, policy being created to fit a
spontaneous tweet and lots (and lots) of chaos.