EqualsA wrote:
If that’s a direct quote from them, it’s pretty shameful. Rough translation: If you campaign on something and win, you can implement it any way you want.
Of course, maybe the president knows this, and maybe he doesn’t (because apart from some moments of lucidity and rough approximation of competence, his reasoning has long been wildly contorted and has gotten worse), but just about everyone in the administration knows this is wildly disingenuous. And most of their supporters know that it’s wildly disingenuous. That’s why the act of brazenly lying is often the point as much as the substance of the lie is. It’s the kayfabe. As long as we have an at least semi-plausible sounding justification for an action, we can and will defend it in that way. That enables them to operate with hardly any guardrails.
Whether Trump understands the mechanism of this or not, it’s still part of a long-term MO for him. It’s not designed to actually provide a rationale for anything; it’s just designed to short-circuit the possibility of reasonable debate.