Goaded by reporters\u2019 questions about Supreme Court nominee Brett M. Kavanaugh\u2019s memorable testimony last week \u2013 \u201cI like beer! I still like beer!\u201d \u2013 the teetotaling president offered an unsolicited thought on his own abstemiousness.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m just saying, I\u2019m not a drinker,\u201d he said. \u201cIt\u2019s one of my only good traits. \u2026 I\u2019ve never had alcohol. I\u2019ve just \u2013 you know, for whatever reason. Can you imagine if I had what a mess I\u2019d be? I\u2019d be the world\u2019s worst.\u201d<\/p>\n
I\u2019ll raise a glass to that bit of introspection. The man often goes off on wild rhetorical benders fueled by nothing stronger than Diet Coke \u2013 something Trump was, at that very moment, proving anew.<\/p>\n
Sunday night\u2019s agreement on a successor to the North American Free Trade Agreement had given Trump a legitimate reason to crow about a \u201cvery, very good,\u201d \u201cterrific,\u201d \u201camazing,\u201d \u201cincredible\u201d and \u201chistoric\u201d deal. But he then opted to take questions on Monday, after aides had signaled he wouldn\u2019t. Inevitably, he trampled his good news with a new rant about the Kavanaugh affair.<\/p>\n
Trump, crying \u201cwitch hunt,\u201d said that he\u2019s with Kavanaugh \u201call the way,\u201d and that his nominee has \u201cbeen treated horribly\u201d and \u201cso viciously and so violently.\u201d<\/p>\n
He said one of Kavanaugh\u2019s accusers \u201chas very little credibility,\u201d and cast doubt on his primary accuser, Christine Blasey Ford: \u201cWhat day was it? Where was it? Do you know the location?\u201d<\/p>\n
Once he got started, Trump couldn\u2019t stop. He complained about \u201ccrap\u201d he gets from the news media, saying journalists are \u201cloco\u201d (a word he used \u201cbecause of the fact that we made a deal with Mexico\u201d).<\/p>\n
And the president alleged he had seen an unnamed Democratic senator \u201cin very, very bad situations, somewhat compromising.\u201d<\/p>\n
On and on he went \u2013 for 90 meandering minutes. Those arrayed behind him in the Rose Garden for the trade announcement fidgeted, bobbed and swayed.<\/p>\n
Somewhere in his disorderly mind, Trump had a notion that he needed to keep on the topic of trade. But his hectoring of reporters only distracted further.<\/p>\n
When he called on ABC News\u2019 Cecilia Vega, he added that \u201cshe\u2019s shocked that I picked her, like in a state of shock.\u201d<\/p>\n
Vega protested. \u201cI\u2019m not. Thank you, Mr. President.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI know you\u2019re not thinking. You never do,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m sorry?\u201d replied Vega.<\/p>\n
Just the kind of gratuitous insult of a woman that the White House needed amid the backlash over Kavanaugh\u2019s alleged mistreatment of women.<\/p>\n
Trump rebuffed Vega and other reporters asking about Kavanaugh, saying he would take those questions later. To his credit, he did. And, when he did, he veered irrevocably off script.<\/p>\n
Watching the president step all over his trade triumph, I couldn\u2019t help but wonder how things might have turned out differently if he had self-discipline.<\/p>\n
Strip away Trump\u2019s zany hyperbole \u2013 that \u201cNAFTA was perhaps the worst trade deal ever made\u201d and that his revised trade deal creates a \u201cmanufacturing powerhouse\u201d where factories never close and workers never lose jobs \u2013 and there is much to like about the new deal at first glance: potentially higher wages, tougher labor and environmental standards, a greater proportion of vehicles made in North America.<\/p>\n
What if instead of taking the alt-right, nationalist path, Trump had, from the beginning, devoted himself to infrastructure rebuilding and trade-pact renegotiation, both broadly popular ideas?<\/p>\n
What if he had negotiated a NAFTA replacement without sparking international chaos, calling Mexicans murderers and rapists and Canada\u2019s prime minister \u201cvery dishonest and weak\u201d?<\/p>\n
And what if he had been able to run his administration without the constant distraction of corruption, scandal, outrage, division and chaos?<\/p>\n
We will never know. Even as Trump celebrated his agreement, he tossed in nonsense claims: U.S. Steel is \u201cbuilding eight or nine plants\u201d and the Obama administration \u201csaid we\u2019re not going to have manufacturing jobs anymore.\u201d Soon he was talking about bump stocks and the border wall, \u201cfake news,\u201d his \u201clandslide\u201d victory in 2016 and 2018 midterm polls, and how \u201cvocal\u201d Kavanaugh was \u201cabout the fact that he likes beer\u201d and the \u201cdifficulty\u201d he had with alcohol \u2013 everything but what Trump was supposed to be talking about.<\/p>\n
Trump\u2019s unpredictable careening from topic to topic is intoxicating to behold. That the president\u2019s mind works this way is sobering.<\/p>\n
Dana Milbank is a columnist for The Washington Post.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" by reporters\u2019 questions about Supreme Court nominee Brett M. Kavanaugh\u2019s memorable testimony last week \u2013 \u201cI like beer! I still like beer!\u201d \u2013 the teetotaling president offered an unsolicited thought on his own abstemiousness. \u201cI\u2019m just saying, I\u2019m not a drinker,\u201d he said. \u201cIt\u2019s one of my only good traits. \u2026 I\u2019ve never had […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5758,6324],"tags":[],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-97698","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-columnists","category-columnists-dana-milbank"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/97698","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=97698"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/97698\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=97698"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=97698"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=97698"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=97698"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}