President Trump Wanted the Title, Not the Job

President Trump Wanted the Title, Not the JobI remember back in 1994, Howard Stern decided to run for governor of New York as a Libertarian. But then everything went wrong. He won the primary overwhelmingly, but he refused to file paperwork with the government regarding the election. Then he didn’t work with the Libertarian Party. I even recall him complaining on air that he was going to take a huge pay cut. In the end, he didn’t run. And I always thought at the time that his real reason was that he knew he wasn’t going to win. And should he win, he wasn’t interested in the job. I think the same thing is true of our very own President Trump.

The thing about President Trump is that it is clear that he’s very upset with how this whole presidency is getting in the way of his life. And it’s understandable. Could his life have been any better than it was before he became President Trump? Think about it. The Apprentice had two seasons left — max. And you know that just about every newspaper editor in America was looking forward to a headline like this, “NBC to Trump: ‘You’re Fired!’” Really, it would have been crushing to his ego.

Almost President Trump Would Have Been Better

The best thing that could have happened to him is if he lost the general election. Because he got everything he was going to from the race itself: performance after performance in front of screaming fans. If he had lost, he would have shouted, “Voter fraud!” And his supporters would have bought it. In fact, it would have become a whole new spoke of the conspiracy theory wheel. But instead, Donald J Trump because President Trump, and it all went really badly. And don’t forget: if he doesn’t manage to win re-election, he’s just a loser. It’ll be hard to claim that it was voter fraud when the same system gave him four years in the White House.

Golfing

I ran across an interesting little article over at New York, Fox News Tweets That Trump Was at the White House When He Was Actually at His Golf Course. Out of context, the fact that President Trump plays so much golf is no big deal. I’ve always had a problem with these complaints — even when leveled against presidents I didn’t like. People have a right to a little R&R — even presidents. The problem is that Trump was one of the loudest voices complaining that Obama was always golfing.

Obama’s Golfing

A really stupid website called “The Obama Golf Counter” claims that Obama golfed on 306 days of his presidency. To put this into perspective, Dwight Eisenhower played about 800 rounds in his 8 years. But that still comes to 10 percent of his days including some golfing.

Trump’s Golfing

But Trump? According to Slate, in his first 9 weeks, President Trump has played golf at least 12 times. That’s almost 20 percent of his days. And this is part of his first 100 days — you know: the action packed period when the president supposedly gets so much done.

He Likes to Watch

On Sunday, the president spent an hour at Trump National. He didn’t play golf, obviously. The White House claimed he had three meetings during that time. But based upon pictures, it looks like he spent the whole time with a couple of buds watching golf on television.

And that takes us back to the New York article, which was based on a tweet announcing the following, “News Alert: @POTUS spending weekend working at the White House.” That was on a day he spent almost six hours golfing, if you consider the travel time. But I don’t care how much he golfs. The world is doubtless safer when he is golfing. I bring it up only to point out that President Trump is not interested in his job.

Why Become President?

I’ve often said that anyone would have to be crazy to want to be president. But I understand why Hillary Clinton wanted to be president: she’s spent almost her whole life in politics. She cares about policy and wants to accomplish things. Now I think that Trump cares about things too. I think his instincts on a lot of things are liberal. But he doesn’t care about them enough to have a vision. So he’s there to just push whatever the Republican establishment offers him.

Remember when Trump was all against the Republican establishment? Remember what screw-ups they were? He made a lot of sense. But the grand total of the energy he was willing to expend fighting them was to call them names while in front of an audience.

That’s what Trumpcare was all about. It wasn’t anything close to what Trump promised. He didn’t even get to the point of realizing that Obamacare was the most conservative healthcare reform that works. Why should he have to do unpleasant things now when he didn’t before? He wants his old job, but with the addition of being called President Trump.

President Trump Doesn’t Want the Job

There are a lot of kinds of non-politicians who run for a major office. There’s Al Franken who might not have held elected office, but was very involved in Democratic politics and who lived and breathed politics. He has gone on to be a great Senator. There’s Arnold Schwarzenegger who was at least somewhat interested in politics and did try to do a good job as Governor of California. I think most people fall into the broad category of people who at least try to do the job.

Trump is not such a man. People talk about impeachment. People talk about the Twenty-Fifth Amendment. But I think it is much more likely that President Trump will just step down. He’ll come up with an excuse, “The system itself is broken and the president just doesn’t have the power to make America great again.” Regardless, he wanted the title: President Trump. He never wanted the job.

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About Frank Moraes

Frank Moraes is a freelance writer and editor online and in print. He is educated as a scientist with a PhD in Atmospheric Physics. He has worked in climate science, remote sensing, throughout the computer industry, and as a college physics instructor. Find out more at About Frank Moraes.

5 thoughts on “President Trump Wanted the Title, Not the Job

  1. He doesn’t want the job — but he wants the money. The Trump brand was fading fast before the election. Now it’s back in business. So I doubt he quits. He’d be a fool to run again, though — unless we’re in the middle of a rah-rah war.

  2. Going into this ‘Presidency’ I was thinking a lot about Al Franken. My longest time bonding with AF’s humor was during a desperate drive from CA to NJ…during which I listened to a book-on-tape of “Why Not Me” (a humorous look at a self-named Franken character running for and becoming the POTUS). The stories of sharing coke and hookers with his brother and friends are almost uncountable….and the pace and rhythm of the work, somewhat plodding……but it appropriately leads to the anti-climax….he didn’t really want the job.
    I think this book is one of the reasons you probably wont ever see Al make a run. But I think he’s a great guy, an exceptionally effective legislator and someone I wish were in the driving seat.
    Given the current circumstances though, damn I am glad to see him where he is.
    I think of this office holding being like wedding a rich old maid……you like the things it comes with, but you try not to spend any time at home.
    Can we cancel the whole presidential library thing, this time around?

    • Thanks for the heads-up on his old books, because I’m excited to discover he has a new one coming soon! “Al Franken: Giant Of The Senate.”

      Oh, God, a Trump library. Every video of clips should be set to the “Benny Hill” music.

  3. For those of us who are aware that Trump isn’t really in to doing all that Presidential stuff, it’s no surprise that he’d want to hand off the actual work to someone else. It was assumed that Mike Pence would be called upon to fill that roll. Now it’s starting to look like the de facto POTUS is Jared Kushner.

    For the record, I didn’t vote for him either.

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