Donald Trump May Finally Be Learning the Difference Between a Country and a Business

If there’s one thing you can say about this administration (just kidding, you can say a whole lot of things), it’s that they’re constantly learning. Staffers are hopefully learning where light switches are. Betsy DeVos just learned where public schools are. Sean Spicer is learning his ABC’s.

.@seanspicer Get this taken down before @realDonaldTrump sees it. pic.twitter.com/e59umK3uVz

— rob delaney (@robdelaney) February 8, 2017

And now Trump may be learning that–get this–a business and a country are not, in fact, the same thing. Shocking, I know! Considering Trump ran on the idea of “draining the swamp” and getting rid of all those D.C. insiders who treat a government like a government and not a board of directors, this must be a big surprise for him.

Now, it’s not like there weren’t things to change about the way our government ran, and of course there was already a lot of corruption among politicians focused on personal profits and upward mobility over actually doing good and representing constituents. But the idea of getting a guy whose only experience lies in (poorly) running a bunch of businesses and hiring him to run the nation as if those are in any way similar, didn’t make a whole lot of sense to a lot of Americans.

According to a report from Politico, based on mostly anonymous sources for obvious reasons, “it has become apparent… that the transition from overseeing a family business to running the country has been tough on him.”

Trump often asks simple questions about policies, proposals and personnel. And, when discussions get bogged down in details, the president has been known to quickly change the subject — to “seem in control at all times,” one senior government official said — or direct questions about details to his chief strategist Steve Bannon, his son-in-law Jared Kushner or House Speaker Paul Ryan. Trump has privately expressed disbelief over the ability of judges, bureaucrats or lawmakers to delay — or even stop — him from filling positions and implementing policies.

Crazy, right? Who would have thought that he couldn’t just play the “I’m the boss” card or tell a 9th Circuit judge “You’re Fired” and do whatever he wants, let alone fix all the nation’s problems?

There are heaps of other reports, mostly leaks from staffers genuinely fearful of Trump’s behavior, that indicate this job may be harder than he thought. There are the reports of him wandering the White House in a bathrobe. He reportedly ends his workday at 6:30pm because he gets tired. He doesn’t know which is the good one: a strong dollar or a weak one. He calls the wrong people (those with hugely different expertise) to answer questions like that. He “doesn’t like to read long memos… So preferably they must be no more than a single page. They must have bullet points but not more than nine per page.”

So if Trump is having a hard time running the country, even as *such* an experienced businessman, what other campaign platforms could he have been wrong about? Just a few guesses:

• He doesn’t actually have “the best words.”
• A wall isn’t going to mean every American gets a great job.
• Not all African-Americans live in the “inner-cities.”
• You can’t just grab women by their genitals, even if you’re famous. They don’t, in fact, like that.
• Humans are worthy of respect.

(image via Shutterstock)

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