It might have been an entirely different presidency if Republicans treated Trump like any other president.
Little else has served Donald Trump as poorly as his own insistence on blind deference and thoughtless fealty from his aides and allies. Once in a while, though, reality pierces the distortion field the president cultivates for himself. And even as Trump rages against the intrusion, he probably doesn’t mind the long-term results. After all, in being compelled to make some concessions to Americans’ shared experience, he ends up advancing his own interests.
Today, the experience the president would rather avoid confronting is that of his own unpopularity. If the president were as beloved as he tells himself he is, no one would have cared that he was airing television ads that do nothing to promote Republican candidates but instead promote himself. What’s more, given partisan dynamics, only Democrats and bean-counting good-governance types would concern themselves with the fact that Trump used taxpayer cash to pay for that narcissistic exhibition. Because the president is generally out of favor, though, the public’s patience for this sort of thing is not what it once was. And on Monday, Trump acknowledged as much.
“I have decided to do the Patriotic Ads, among others, and pay for them myself, and with money I raised for MAGA, Inc,” Trump wrote in a social media post. From now on, his super PAC will foot the bill for those self-promotional spots. It is unclear whether Trump will direct the Department of Homeland Security to reimburse the Treasury for the $10 million already spent on this campaign (out of the hundreds of millions in its coffers), but he should.
Doing the right thing for its own sake is, of course, its own reward. But taking another of the president’s scandalizing displays of contempt for even the appearance of propriety in public office off the table cannot hurt Trump or his party. And although the president and his supporters have convinced themselves that doing the Democrats’ work for them and constantly reminding the public that Trump occupies the Oval Office will drive his low-propensity voters to the polls in November, the evidence suggests otherwise.
For weeks on end, the polling has been consistent. Republicans and GOP-leaning independents are not as enthusiastic about voting in November as their Democratic counterparts, but the MAGA right most certainly is. Rather, it’s those who identify as “non-MAGA” Republicans — a cohort that by no means consists entirely of limited government conservatives — who need some persuading. Those voters are down on Trump’s tariffs, Trump’s handling of the economy, Trump’s conduct of the war in Iran, and, in general, Trump’s ubiquity. They might be persuaded to vote for their local representatives or against Democrats, but they’re stubbornly immune to persuasion from Trump himself.
Of course, the ads that Trump insists are not promoting himself but, rather, “promoting the country” will not disappear from the airwaves. The president would not abide that. But Trump’s grudging acknowledgment of the voters’ manifest dissatisfaction obviates damaging headlines like CNN’s: “Trump is clearly trying to buy votes with taxpayer money.”
Imagine if the president had been warned by a well-meaning adviser before this ad campaign to avoid applying a taxpayer-funded salve to his wounded ego? What if his supporters had less tolerance for his flights of vainglorious fancy? One of the many unforced errors that seems set to contribute to a Republican drubbing next month might have been avoided.
And who knows? Perhaps Trump might have been talked out of other mistakes, too. It might have been an entirely different presidency if Republicans treated Trump like any other president.