Margaret Carlson, Columnist

Slow Down, Mr. President

Trump is moving so fast, the media and even his own party can’t keep up.

January 26, 2017 at 8:36 PM UTC

Margaret Carlson was a White House correspondent for Time, a weekly panelist on CNN’s “Capital Gang” and an editor at the New Republic.

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Donald Trump is moving as quickly as he can. The whirling dervish occupying the Oval Office knows the body politic is not designed to absorb so many actions taken so fast with so little thought. Not Capitol Hill, not the press, not the new president’s critics or friends. And not, it would seem, President Enrique Pena Nieto of Mexico, who cancelled a much ballyhooed one-on-one with Trump that was supposed to be the opportunity to work out a payment plan for the wall along the border. That’s what happens when you can’t wait until you have a secretary of state. If there’s one message coming out of the Republican retreat in Philadelphia where Trump spoke Thursday afternoon, it’s slow down, you’re moving too fast.

Not a chance. Trump is a man of action and it’s working for him, in a way. Call a meeting with CEOs, visit key cabinet agencies, hold signing ceremonies, watch yourself being discussed on cable TV late into the night, legislate by fiat, and tweet your heart out. By no means stop to read a briefing book or study what’s gone before. Make moves based on instinct and impulse.