The Atlantic: How The Swamp Drained Trump

Politico explains how President Trump came to deliver this cucky Pence speech:

“The man whose inaugural address centered on the idea of “American carnage” offered “one team, one people, and one American family” on Tuesday in a bid to convince a skeptical public – and an equally skeptical Congress – that he is a stable leader who can unify a fractured nation. …

Hoping for a repeat of the glowing response he received after his first address to a joint session of Congress last February, the president urged his speechwriters to write him a more traditional address, aides said. The final result was reminiscent of the speeches that have echoed through the House chamber for decades, and one Republican lobbyist mused privately that one could be forgiven for confusing it with a George W. Bush speech. …”

Basically, it is because he wanted to be praised by the media after his Joint Address to Congress last year was so well received. Trump craves approval more than anything else.

McKay Coppins has an article in The Atlantic about how everyone from the Republican establishment to mainstream conservatives to the Democrats to foreign leaders has seized on Trump’s vanity and status anxiety to separate the man from his nationalist populist message:

“A year later, it seems clear they didn’t need my services—they figured Trump out all on their own.

For all his anti-establishment bluster, Trump has proven to be a paper tiger as president. Instead of cracking down on Wall Street plutocrats, he’s appointed them to his cabinet and given them tax cuts. Instead of browbeating world leaders, he’s let them flatter him into submission with theatrically obsequious state visits. Instead of locking out the sneering media elites, he’s pantingly courted the approval of New York Times reporters and book-writing dandies from Manhattan. And while he hobnobs in Davos with the globalist glitterati, the ragtag team of loyal lieutenants who set out in 2016 to upturn the established order with Trump has been largely shoved to the sidelines or purged altogether from his White House. …

Indeed, while Trump’s “populism” has manifested itself primarily in performative spasms of culture war, the most substantive policy victories of his first year in office have gone to the donor-class conservatism of Paul Ryan and his fellow swamp creatures in the congressional leadership. As it turns out, all they had to do was ask nicely.

It is perhaps the central irony of the Donald Trump story: The Queens-born billionaire who could never win the respect of the taunting insiders on the other side of the river led a bitter revenge march to the White House, ranting and raving and railing against the “haters”—and then giving them what they wanted the moment they said please. …

A longtime Trump adviser who helped launch the billionaire’s presidential campaign, Nunberg now sees establishment spies and sell-outs infecting every level of the administration. He refers derisively to the president’s chief economic adviser as “Gary ‘Carried Interest’ Cohn,” or alternately, “Mr. Goldman Sachs.” He seethes that National-Security Adviser H.R. McMaster has “never missed giving a speech at a George Soros-funded event in his life.” Defense Secretary James Mattis is, in his view, a “John McCain type of Republican (which is to say, the bad type); and Ivanka Trump, Jared Kushner, and their cohort of cosmopolitan allies are “a bunch of Democrats.” (If you’re having trouble making sense of these insults, it’s likely because you don’t speak Breitbart—suffice it to say, they are not minor slurs.) …

As The Wall Street Journal recently outlined in its “How-To Guide” for dealing with the commander in chief, each would-be Trump-whisperer has developed his or her own technique. When Trump wants to take serious trade action against other countries, for example, advisers will sometimes come up with reasons to stall, “hoping he’ll forget what he wanted done and move on to something else.” When Trump is weighing defense options, Mattis will gently steer him with a combination of flattery and Jedi mind tricks. “He says, ‘Your instincts are absolutely correct,’ and then gets [Trump] to do the exact opposite of what his instincts say,” a source told the Journal.

One person close to the White House, who requested anonymity to describe internal dynamics, told me that Trump is so fully buffeted by handlers like this that some days the best chance he has of hearing from an adviser who actually shares his instincts is a late-night phone call with one of the primetime Fox News hosts. “Unless he’s talking to Sean Hannity, Tucker Carlson, or Laura Ingraham after their shows,” the person said, the president’s populist allies can’t “get to him.” …

The global economic forum in Davos, Switzerland, is the kind of thing that Donald Trump never got invited to before he became president. In fact, the famously exclusive annual meeting for the geopolitical elite and the respectable rich (or “Davos Men,” as they are often referred to, with varying degrees of irony) epitomizes the establishment that Trump rose to power railing against. It was only natural, then, that when Trump announced he was going to address the forum this year, many assumed he would take the opportunity to deliver a campaign-style tirade against the globalist system-riggers in the audience. …

But from the moment Air Force One touched down in Switzerland, it seemed clear that Trump did not see himself as a gate-crasher. His invitation to Davos had been like the lifting of a velvet rope, and in this rarified setting, he was on his very best behavior—respectful, responsible, even grateful for his VIP treatment. Taking the stage to a rousing rendition of the Coburg March played by the Swiss Honor Guard, Trump declared America “open for business,” and lathered approbation on the attendees. …”

Donald Trump didn’t want to overthrow the failed and corrupt political establishment. He really only wanted to join it and finally be accepted by it.

This is why the nationalist populist charge through the primaries and campaign ended as soon as the dust settled after the election. It is why the likes of Gary Cohn ended up in the White House. Once Donald Trump’s revenge on the establishment was satiated, he didn’t need the principles or policies anymore. He has been willing to compromise on those in exchange for praise.

The speech that he gave last night will only embolden him to shift further in this direction. It was widely praised and well received. He will want more accolades and epaulets now.