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| Fraser P. Seitel |
It’s ironic with the price of eggs going up, how many of them Donald Trump manages to break each week.
• He shuts down the Agency for International Development and fires 1,400 people.
• He promises to take over the Gaza “Riviera” strip and lets that murdering Putin keep the land he’s stolen in Ukraine.
• He frees all the January 6 Capitol rioters and throws in that thievin’ Mayor Adams for good measure.
This President is breaking an egg a minute!
Whether you’re part of the 70 million who love the guy or the other 70 million who hate his guts, you’ve got to admit Donald Trump has been plenty busy.
Much of what the once and current President has started to do—rein in immigration, cut out government waste, bring the wars to an end, bid adieu to wokeness—all make sense and got him elected.
But … the Presidency is a four-year gig, and Trump has three years and 11 months left to earn his spot as either one of the greatest presidents of all time or one of the worst in history or just another of the many, like Joe Biden, who proved themselves to be fiercely mediocre.
As positive as several of Trump’s early initiatives have been—reestablishing the border, locking up illegal immigrant gang members, securing big U.S. tech investments, forcing Mexico and Canada and soon the Europeans to contribute more on joint issues, reopening the White House to media scrutiny, etc.—he’s also made several telling mistakes. Such as:
• Pardoning every January 6 rioter, including the thugs who attacked police, was a grievous error.
• Ditto pardoning Mayor Adams, who clearly broke the law.
• Taking an Elon Musk meat cleaver to federal employees was, if not unconstitutional, certainly unnecessary.
• Using the Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport crash to lash out at D.E.I. policies was jaw-dropping.
All of these boneheaded blunders underscore Trump’s Achilles heel: He simply doesn’t listen to anyone else.
That seemed not to be the case during the campaign, when Trump frequently heeded the advice of his experienced campaign managers, Chris LaCivita and Susie Wiles. But now that he’s President again, Trump has appeared to shed the shackles of thoughtful counsel and revert to his prior never-in-doubt self.
While he already has chalked up several victories in a few short weeks, what Donald Trump desperately needs for the longer term is sound, reasonable and professional public relations advice.
In this new term, Trump has surrounded himself with supplicants who either accept on faith his pronouncements or, if they have a quarrel, are too afraid to challenge their cock-sure chief.
His 27-year-old Press Secretary, Karoline Leavitt, is a great example. She’s good, glib, smart and secure beyond her years. The difference in confidence and competence between Leavitt and her tentative Biden administration predecessors is night and day.
But Trump’s young press aide is an interpreter not a counselor, an accepter not a challenger. MAGA through and through. What the boss says is always right. And she communicates it clearly and with commitment. Hers is not to ask questions.
And so it goes throughout the new Trump administration hierarchy; true believers who won’t push back. The only potential “disruptor” may be Wiles, who Trump named White House Chief of Staff. But so far, she’s been rarely seen or heard.
The job of a public relations counselor is to challenge decisions and to vet possible outcomes, including worst case scenarios. With no one to play that role in the new Trump administration, the President leaves himself open to exposing several glaring faults as a leader. Among them:
He lacks discipline
In speeches and impromptu sessions with the press, he regularly hurts himself by letting his bad impulses prevail. The American Airlines-helicopter crash press conference was a case in point. While Trump tried mightily to express sorrow for the crash victims, he ultimately succumbed to his worst instincts to blame “woke” policies for putting the wrong people in the cockpit and air traffic control. A strong public relations advisor would have cautioned him in advance to save that jab for another venue.
He doesn’t study
Trump is and has always been a “seat of the pants” operator. He has little use for briefing papers, boring experts and range of choices. He works hard but is a lazy student. He’s the boss and now he’s the “law.” So, who needs somebody to ward him away from potential trouble spots?
Elon Musk’s annihilation of federal workers is a glaring example of how consultation with advisors, schooled in corporate cutbacks, would have been eminently better than the wholesale beheadings that are taking place and will likely be overturned in court. Trump’s vision to reduce the bloated bureaucracy is universally applauded, but the way he’s gone about executing the federal workforce is dumb.
He’s too black and white
Trump doesn’t do nuance. Fire them all! Cut out the agency! Get rid of their security clearances. Pardon the whole bunch of ’em! All wrong and entirely preventable if he had a public relations counselor who didn’t fear him. It’s just a matter of time before one of these absolute decisions bites him in his presidential buttocks.
He doesn’t accept responsibility
As any experienced public relations counselor will tell you, the hardest thing for most CEOs to admit is they were wrong. Accordingly, CEO and now President Trump has always been loath to acknowledge he made a mistake. Rescinding the budget freeze on federal programs during the first week was a rare occasion when he reversed a decision. Perhaps it was Chief of Staff Wiles who got through to him. If so, that’s a hopeful sign.
Again, it all comes down to the fact that Donald Trump doesn’t listen. And that’s a real problem if you’ve got another 46 months to go.
The President was sent back to Washington to break eggs, and so far, he’s doing just that. But his high-wire act will get progressively more perilous as the days go by and the job gets harder. Without an experienced, tough-minded, trusted counselor to protect him, Donald Trump increasingly risks making one foolish decision too many which may, like Humpty Dumpty, send him falling face first right off the wall.
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Fraser P. Seitel has been a communications consultant, author and teacher for 40 years. He’s author of the Pearson text “The Practice of Public Relations,” now in its 14th edition and co-author of “Rethinking Reputation” and “Idea Wise.” He may be reached directly at [email protected].
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