Originally Posted by
j44ke
I didn’t understand how Dirk’s comment follows from Lionel’s comment, but now Dirk’s comment is gone.
Honestly we are trying really hard to be fair about this. We’ve asked a number of people to stop with the name calling of political figures. We’ve asked people not so simply shout out accusations and instead support their criticism with news articles or other information from newspapers of record or scientific resources.
Politics is politics though. Everyone has a viewpoint. But we are trying to encourage it to move towards a more reasonable tone and fact based criticism.
One thing I will say, is that I have started being able to hear Trump’s advisors behind the things that Trump says. He has a strong will and a selective attention, so he feels he is saying what he heard from his advisors and perhaps rightly feeling frustrated and indignant when he is criticized for what he views as factual information from reputable sources. And if you read along the news thread of statements he’s made, articles written subsequently over several days start to figure out where the info came from and what information was actually presented to Trump. And sometimes, that info is good. It just never made it through the messenger.
In short, I think he has some good people working for him right now, but the loss in translation that occurs in the process of transmitting their findings to him is significant. Add to that his natural tendency to aggrandize everything and his thirst for dramatic pronouncements, he sets himself up time and again to get dissected by the media because that’s what they are trained to do (and that what they should do) when things come out sideways from people in government.
I just don’t think he is good at this. And if I was an advisor, I would tell him to decenter the daily briefings. Greet everyone and then stand aside. Let a chain of experts present the info. He’s just making it harder for himself to look presidential by trying to be the chief explainer. He’ll look better 100% if he projects confidence in what his people say, and the information reaches the country directly from the source of information.
For instance, on this immigration policy change, I can guess that there is a kernel of solid immunological practice behind it to reduce the influx of additional infections into the country. Just taking the shelter in place scheme and applying it to international scale. But he presented it before it was ready, he may have been sold on the idea by an advisor using the “protecting jobs” argument, and he is frustrated that what he calls his complete shut-down of travel from China in February has been shown to be anything but. So it becomes a complete stop on immigration in a tweet, and then there is a flurry of activity and news articles as everyone tries to figure out what that means, even his own people, and the “complete” part disappears because business depends on foreign hires, higher ed depends on foreign students, farms depend on foreign labor, and the final policy is a 60 day pause on green cards.
Flip that around and announce a 60 day pause on new green cards to allow preparation of a cohesive immunological policy on immigration, and that looks a lot better.
So whether Trump does good things periodically or not is almost impossible to decipher, because the manner in which he does everything is so obliterated by his built-in white noise machine that whatever value is there is almost completely covered over.
Like Fauci said - they can only give him the information, they can’t jump in front of the microphone when he gets it wrong. He’s the President.
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