Does Anyone Think We Know All There Is To Know About Trump?

Writing for Politico Magazine, John Harris acknowledges we know a lot about Trump-- all the stuff that makes him the worst president in history. If we read his twitter feed, for example, we know he "lives in a state of agitated grievance, spending countless dark hours when most people are sleeping fulminating against his enemies and bemoaning that he is being insufficiently praised." But what Harris wants to speculate about are the possible nightmares we may have to live through before we're rid of him-- what we don't know but must be on guard against. He offers "half-dozen Trump bombshells that have yet to go off-- but almost certainly will someday."

Much of it is post-presidency stuff for historians and, hopefully, judges and juries, like "the extent to which foreign interests seek to influence Trump through favorable dealings with his holdings or those of family members" and understanding Trump's relationship with Putin and the roll Putin played in putting an obvious incompetent into the Oval Office. "Someday," wrote Harris, "just as happened with Moscow’s view of the Cuban Missile Crisis, there will be Russian documents and Russian officials to help explain why Russia promoted email break-ins and social media propaganda to help Trump over Hillary Clinton in 2016. Or, once elected, why Trump kicked out U.S. official note takers in a meeting with Putin."

On different occasions, people close to Trump in an official sense have been described in books or journalistic accounts referring to their boss as an “idiot” (former chief of staff John Kelly and former national security adviser H.R. McMaster), a “moron,” (former secretary of state Rex Tillerson), “like an 11-year-old child” (former aide Steve Bannon) with an understanding of world affairs akin to “a fifth- or sixth-grader” (former defense secretary James Mattis).

But here’s who you have not heard spilling secrets about Trump: Ex-spouses, or children, or other people who love Trump or once loved him, or even people like household staff who had occasion to observe him in an intimate settings.

Washington Post writer Mary Jordan this month published “The Art of Her Deal,” on Melania Trump. The book came with a noteworthy scoop: That the first lady had renegotiated her prenuptial agreement with the president after his election.

But the book also underscored how little is understood about Trump’s most personal relationships and their dynamics, and what Trump is genuinely like when he’s not on television or Twitter. We know that Ivanka Trump and Jared Kusher are influential, of course, but have insight into barely a fraction of their interactions with the president.

Jordan told me she was struck by how much time Trump spends alone, up late or early, without “real friends.” The relationships he does have are often shielded by a wave of nondisclosure agreements or other financial or legal incentives. Jordan recalled once approaching someone who had been around Trump in family settings and the person “was shaking like a leaf” for fear that he would be punished for being a source.

Silence rarely lasts forever, especially once a president is out of office or is deceased, and these recollections promise to be a rich vein for understanding a president who is startlingly transparent about some aspects of his psychology and unnervingly opaque about others.

Yeah, well we all hope he dies soon for a variety of reasons but getting the scoop about how much more of an asshole he is than we already know... not at the tippy-top of my list. Yes, eventually White House records will come out and shed a lot of light on this dark period of American history. But before then, I'm hoping we already have photos of Trump behind bars.

But here's one that Harris brings up that has relevance to our current world-- how unhealthy is he really (and will he die soon?) "If Trump’s health is more troubled than usually terse official statements are letting on," he wrote, "he would not be the first president for whom this is the case. The physical and cognitive condition of presidents has been a key avenue of inquiry for historians of Woodrow Wilson, Franklin D. Roosevelt, John F. Kennedy, and Ronald Reagan. What was that unscheduled trip to Walter Reed Army Medical Center last November all about? What explains Trump’s unsteady appearance drinking water or walking down a ramp at West Point earlier this month?" What about his deteriorating mental health? He's obviously having more frequent bouts of senility. Is there a straitjacket in his immediate future?

“We will find out eventually all the things that they do, even their taxes,” Jordan said of the Trumps. “The questions we don’t know the answer to are about what’s in their minds.”

“Does he have unexpressed thoughts?” asked presidential historian Jon Meacham. The tendency to assume that Trump has no introspection or strategic sense beyond what he shares on Twitter may itself be too superficial, he added.

In the world abroad, Meacham asked, what explains the tension between Trump’s blustery talk but seemingly dovish instincts on use of military force? Here at home, since his early New York days, Trump has been skilled at manipulating his image and penetrating establishment circles while remaining independent of them. Does he operate from a theory of power or on improvisational instinct alone?

“He’s so good at making us focus on the part of the iceberg we can see,” Meacham said. “I’m not suggesting there are great hidden depths to him, but there is stuff we don’t know.”

And there are things about America during the Trump years, we don’t know. “I’m more interested in what he says about the country than what happened moment-to-moment in the Oval Office. His grip on 40 percent of us is fascinating.”

Until the deeper dimensions of the Trump years are illuminated, his closer-to-the-surface ruminations are keeping the daily historians busy.

“Imagine if the Nixon tapes were played every night on Walter Cronkite,” Baker observed. “We are seeing all the stuff that is usually hidden play out in real time.”