Jonathan Bernstein, Columnist

Trump’s Know-Nothing Tour de Force

The president is winging it, even on an issue that risks his entire presidency.

May 11, 2017 at 8:50 PM UTC

Jonathan Bernstein is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist covering politics. A former professor of political science at the University of Texas at San Antonio, he wrote A Plain Blog About Politics.

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I was going to write about something else today, but frankly I just can't work around what Donald Trump has said in multiple interviews released today. You should really see the full interviews, or at least the excerpts I'm linking to, but here's the gist:

Why does that fit in with the other two quotes? Because it demonstrates that Trump can't be bothered to even master his own talking points, even in something which could put his entire presidency at risk. Or perhaps he's intellectually incapable of doing so. Either way, the president talks and talks without showing any mastery -- any understanding -- of anything.