{"id":5274,"date":"2018-01-29T15:28:21","date_gmt":"2018-01-29T20:28:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/gabrielsnyder.com\/notes\/?p=5274"},"modified":"2018-01-29T15:28:21","modified_gmt":"2018-01-29T20:28:21","slug":"5274","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/gabrielsnyder.com\/notes\/2018\/01\/29\/5274\/","title":{"rendered":""},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The official conventional wisdom heading into tomorrow&#8217;s State of the Union is that Trump will show a softer side and <a href=\"https:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/politics\/trumps-first-state-of-the-union-can-a-divisive-president-flip-the-script\/2018\/01\/27\/666030bc-02dd-11e8-9d31-d72cf78dbeee_story.html\">&#8220;bring the country together&#8221;<\/a> and <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2018\/01\/27\/us\/politics\/trump-state-of-the-union.html?rref=collection%2Fsectioncollection%2Fpolitics&amp;action=click&amp;contentCollection=politics&amp;region=rank&amp;module=package&amp;version=highlights&amp;contentPlacement=2&amp;pgtype=sectionfront\">&#8220;reach beyond the people who voted for him in 2016&#8221;<\/a>. This may seem like Great Pivot thinking, that Trump one day \u00e2\u20ac\u201d\u00c2\u00a0someday! \u00e2\u20ac\u201d\u00c2\u00a0wake up and decide to be a generally normal right-of-center Republican. But I think people are missing something, which, if you go back through Trump&#8217;s entire career, is his unwavering strategy of taking credit for things he didn&#8217;t do. The man first made his name by pretending to be a wealthy real estate investor. After he went bankrupt, he started a business of literally slapping his name on buildings (and steaks and wine and anything else) that he had nothing to do with. Then he became a TV star by pretending to be a chieftain of industry. Pretend is what Trump does. So, if Trump paints a rosier picture than his &#8220;American carnage&#8221; of his inaugural, it&#8217;s not because he&#8217;s changed, it&#8217;s because he wants to now pretend he has made everything better. Don&#8217;t expect a 71-year-old con man to ever change his con.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The official conventional wisdom heading into tomorrow&#8217;s State of the Union is that Trump will show a softer side and &#8220;bring the country together&#8221; and &#8220;reach beyond the people who voted for him in 2016&#8221;. This may seem like Great Pivot thinking, that Trump one day \u00e2\u20ac\u201d\u00c2\u00a0someday! \u00e2\u20ac\u201d\u00c2\u00a0wake up and decide to be a generally &hellip; <\/p>\n<p class=\"link-more\"><a href=\"http:\/\/gabrielsnyder.com\/notes\/2018\/01\/29\/5274\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5274","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/s2skW4-5274","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/gabrielsnyder.com\/notes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5274","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/gabrielsnyder.com\/notes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/gabrielsnyder.com\/notes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/gabrielsnyder.com\/notes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/gabrielsnyder.com\/notes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5274"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/gabrielsnyder.com\/notes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5274\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/gabrielsnyder.com\/notes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5274"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/gabrielsnyder.com\/notes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5274"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/gabrielsnyder.com\/notes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5274"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}