At this point, when an aide or adviser to Donald Trump offers to translate something the president has said, you should probably assume they have no idea what they’re talking about.
Trump on Tuesday laid waste to White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt’s efforts to pretend he didn’t say something as controversial as he did. And this has become an altogether familiar exercise.
The controversy du jour in the Trump administration right now is Trump having floated nationalizing elections.
“The Republicans should say, ‘We want to take over,’” Trump told former FBI Deputy Director Dan Bongino in a podcast episode published Monday. “We should take over the voting, the voting in at least many — 15 places. The Republicans ought to nationalize the voting.”
This is highly impractical, given the Constitution gives the power to run elections to the states. But it’s also provocative, in that this is the president who tried to overturn an election based on a volume of false voter fraud claims. Imagine that guy commandeering control of an election.
So up stepped Leavitt to suggest that Trump hadn’t actually said what he said.
She claimed Trump was instead referring to Congress passing the SAVE Act, a bill that aims to combat noncitizen voting in federal elections – something that is already illegal and that experts say rarely happens.
That was nonsensical, of course. The SAVE Act would add federal requirements to register to vote, sure, but Trump was talking about taking over the voting in a specific number of places (15) – not passing a law that would apply to the whole country.
And sure enough, Trump on Tuesday made clear that he meant what he said. Asked by CNN’s Kaitlan Collins what he meant by nationalize the election, he made no mention of the SAVE Act and doubled down on the idea of the federal government asserting a more expansive form of control.
“If a state can’t run an election, I think the people behind me should do something about it,” Trump said, referring to congressional Republicans standing alongside him at an Oval Office signing ceremony.
He pointed to purported “corruption on elections” in Detroit, Philadelphia and Atlanta and said: “If they can’t count the votes legally and honestly, then somebody else should take over.”
“I don’t know why the federal government doesn’t do them anyway,” the president mused.
It’s the kind of contradiction that would be a scandal in any other administration. Trump’s top spokesperson said he meant one thing, and that turned out not to be true. If nothing else, it’s a huge mark against a spokesperson’s credibility. After all, their job is to quite literally speak for the president.
Except that this is largely par for the course. Trump has regularly contradicted his aides’ and advisers’ attempts to play translator:
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In 2016, Trump campaigned on a proposed a “ban” on Muslim immigration. But when he instituted travel restrictions on a series of majority-Muslim countries in 2017, aides claimed it somehow wasn’t actually a “ban” (a word that was unhelpful for their legal defense). Except Trump then said it was a “ban,” again.
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In 2018, Trump was reported to have referred to some largely -Black countries as “shithole” countries. Some aides and GOP senators went on to suggest he had not said that. But last year, Trump admitted to the whole thing.
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In 2019, Trump said the United States’ interest in Syria was in “keeping” its oil. Except that could be a violation of international law, so Defense Secretary Mark Esper assured reporters Trump was instead referring to denying ISIS access to the oilfields. Trump then repeated, “We’re keeping the oil. … We left troops behind only for the oil.”
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In 2020, Trump said at a rally that he had told his administration to slow down coronavirus testing. White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany then said Trump’s comment was “in jest,” while another adviser said Trump was joking. Trump later said: “I don’t kid.”
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Last year, Trump referred to China, North Korea and Russia doing underground nuclear tests and added, “We have to test.” Energy Secretary Chris Wright suggested Trump’s comment was about testing nuclear components, “not nuclear explosions.” But days later, Trump said that “we will do nuclear testing like other countries do.” (There’s no evidence that the Trump administration has actually set about doing nuclear weapons tests.)
In many of these cases, it’s not clear who is telling the truth. History suggests Trump often aims to do impractical things that never come to fruition.
But the point remains that you just can’t trust his aides when they try to tell you what Trump really meant.
Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina said it pretty well back in 2017.
“I don’t believe Trump colluded with the Russians,” Graham told the Washington Post, “because I don’t believe he colludes with his own staff.”
That might be reassuring when it came to Trump’s culpability in the Russia investigation, but it’s a heck of a way to run a country.
