Welcome to Washington, President Pence
I could never figure out why Donald Trump would want to be president. He flummoxed me further when he stopped taking his daily national security briefings while Mike Pence is. Now, I get it. Trump wanted to win because he doesn’t care about running the country. He cares about winning, being the center of attention and making money.
My prediction is that Trump will be president in name only and Pence will run the policy. Trump will spend his days using the White House to make more money. Pence will have free rein to handle all the policy.
This sounds paranoid but I have evidence. Look to the cabinet he is putting together. Trump said he did not want to privatize Medicare yet Congressman Tom Price (R-GA), the nominee for the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) has adopted House Speaker Paul Ryan’s (R-WI) plan, which does just that. Under this plan, seniors will be given vouchers and left to fend for themselves. Trump also said he wanted a health care plan that let people with pre-existing health conditions stay on their insurance plan. Price has authored a replacement to Obamacare that specifically doesn’t have that.
In fact, despite wanting to "Drain the Swamp," all of the people that Trump has selected for top positions are Washington insiders whose political ideology mirrors Pence’s. You may point to Steve Bannon but has supposedly said that Breitbart was just a "platform." Trump doesn’t care about policy. T
This also explains how Pence, who is a staunch conservative, who is deeply religious and believes we should spend money on gay conversion therapy could stand by when tapes of Trump talking about assaulting women and watching 16 girls change before his pageants. He was loyal because he knew it would be worth it.
For Trump’s part, he has told many people that he can have whatever conflict of interest that he wants. While he is not taking his security briefing, he is spending his days, talking to dozens of world leaders. From having his daughter in the meeting with the Japanese prime minister to hawking his hotels from government servers (and every stop along the campaign trail) he is showing already that he cares more about making money than policy.
As for his need for attention, that’s what the tweets are all about. Trump’s need for attention and a scary view into the only government talk he will care about; silencing his political critics. At rallies he talked about beating up protesters and "shutting down parts of the internet and in tweets he muses about stripping the citizenship of flag burner and if you add in his admiration of Vladimir Putin, he doesn’t want to be president, he wants to king.
Trump’s actions and statements have already sent one company out of the country. The Way Back Machine , the site that was basically the library of the internet, has said it does not feel safe here anymore.
"On November 9th in America, we woke up to a new administration promising radical change," the Internet Archive's blog post reads. "It was a firm reminder that institutions like ours, built for the long-term, need to design for change. For us, it means keeping our cultural materials safe, private and perpetually accessible. It means preparing for a Web that may face greater restrictions. It means serving patrons in a world in which government surveillance is not going away; indeed it looks like it will increase."
If I am wrong, there will be vigorous debates about the future of health care and medicare reform. If I am right, both will sail through the House of Representatives and only be stopped by a filibuster.
I hope I am wrong.
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