Trump Is Lying When He Says He Has a Concept of a Plan

Trump has zero interest in or knowledge about policy.

Yesterday I talked briefly about one of the major contradictions in Trump’s immigration rhetoric at the debate. Since people are still discussing Trump’s embarrassing showing, I thought I’d take a minute to write about one of the other low points—his response on healthcare.

During the debate, the ABC moderator Linsey Davis pressed Trump as to whether he would try to repeal the Affordable Care Act, as he had during his first term. She also asked if he had a plan to replace the ACA if he did repeal it. Trump waffled and dodged and eventually admitted he had no specific plan, though he said he had “concepts of a plan.”

Trump was roundly mocked for that response. Aaron Rupar pointed out that “Trump has been running for president FOR 9 YEARS, has been getting dragged about not having a healthcare plan for at least 8 of them -- and still can't be bothered to spend a few hours with his advisers coming up with one! World historical laziness.”

All true! It’s also true, I think, that Trump not only has no plan, but has no concept of a plan. His answer wasn’t just weak and ridiculous. It was also a lie.

As Aaron says, Trump is lazy. He’s also just almost completely uninterested in policy. After nine years, for example, he still has no idea how tariffs work; he thinks they’re a tax on foreign countries, rather than a sales tax on goods from those countries, which is paid by consumers. He refuses to explain what he would do about the war in Ukraine. Instead, when questioned on how his policies would differ from Biden’s, he just blathers about how as soon as he was in office, everything would be perfect because he’s so tough and gets along with Putin so well.

Politicians sometimes will obfuscate or refuse to discuss policies clearly because they are trying to avoid taking a stand that would alienate some voters. Harris does this to some extent whenever asked about Palestine and Israel. Healthcare is a difficult issue for Trump; his base wants to get rid of the ACA, but everyone else is horrified at the thought of returning to a status quo where insurance companies could ban people with preexisting conditions, or in which people without health care through work had literally no options. So Trump tries to avoid the issue.

Trump’s failure to engage with policy goes beyond this though. On healthcare he doesn’t even set out broad principles for change. He will say that Obamacare is bad but he doesn’t say why it’s bad, or indicate what he’d like to change. He doesn’t gesture even in general towards what he thinks is important in a healthcare policy. He has no specific proposals, but he has no general animating goals either. He literally does not have “concepts” for a plan. He has no thoughts at all about a plan. He knows nothing, and he wants to know nothing. His mind, on healthcare, is a giant orange vacuum. As it is on most issues.

Trump doesn’t care about policy; he doesn’t want to know about policy. He wants to be in power because he likes feeling that he can order people around, because he likes it when people give him money to bribe him, and because he likes being immune from prosecution for his compulsive corruption and criminal activity. But he doesn’t know how government works, doesn’t know how it affects people, and aggressively doesn’t care.

This utter lack of interest or knowledge is extremely dangerous. It’s why Trump tends to follow the lead of whoever talked to him last (which appears to be how he got J.D. Vance as his running mate.) That makes him easy for foreign leaders to manipulate. It also means that he tends to follow the lead of whichever radical right wing asshole has access to him. People with intense policy preferences can get Trump to do whatever they want, because Trump not only has no preferences, but doesn’t understand the consequences, political or functional, of any policy he (nominally) supports or opposes.

Trump has convictions. He hates women. He hates Black people. He hates immigrants. He thinks Donald Trump should be allowed to commit crimes with impunity. He wants to throw his enemies in jail or murder them. But none of this translates into any policy beyond, “elect me and everything will be great.”

Stephen Robinson points out that the press often engages in “sanewashing”—they try to turn Trump’s addled, ignorant bluster into coherent policy statements of one sort or the other. But Trump has no coherent policies; more, he doesn’t even have concepts of plans, or generalized, reality based, moral or practical intuitions about what policy should be attempting to do.

Trump is unfit for office because he’s a disgusting fascist bigot. He’s unfit for office because he is an authoritarian who wants to destroy democracy. But he’s also unfit for office because he simply has no interest in government and no knowledge of how to govern adequately, or even badly. We should not reelect someone whose public health policy involves injecting bleach. For fuck’s sake.