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March 29th, 2024

Insight

Trump's trump card --- and how to beat it

Stephen Stromberg

By Stephen Stromberg

Published Feb. 29, 2016

Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., and Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, came into Thursday night's Republican presidential debate desperate to halt Donald Trump. Instead of mostly attacking each other, they planned to shoot at the GOP frontrunner. And they did a lot of that. But, for most of the debate, not very effectively.

Rubio attacked Trump for hiring foreign workers and getting hit with a lawsuit over Trump University. Cruz attacked Trump for refusing to release his tax returns (at least anytime soon) and for giving donations to liberal Democrats. But Trump has a trump card: He is running on the fact that he was a businessman, and that allows him to mount a dual defense.

First, he can argue that, in effect, all alleged hypocrisies are forgivable. His ideology was making money. Yes, he hired migrant labor. He was running a business. Wouldn't you? Sure, he gave to liberal Democrats. He was trying to buy influence like anyone else would in his position. Trump can then claim that he understands how politics works without having to bother with actually having a record of political leadership to defend -- a record that might include a tough vote or a hard decision that needed a sentence longer than "make America great again" to explain. "I know politicians better than you do," he said to Cruz, "and it's not good." He knows the system, according to Trump, because he was playing it, not condoning it.

The more Trump excuses himself from responsibility for things he did in the past, the more it may help him. He styles his life-long pursuit of profit as his overriding qualification. "I am a negotiator," he insisted when explaining his approach to the Israel-Palestine dispute Thursday night. "A deal is a deal," he said, essentially arguing that his experience striking real-estate bargains will help him solve one of the world's most intractable geopolitical disputes. "Nobody knows politicians better than I do. They're all talk, they're no action," he said in his closing remarks Thursday. "I will get it done. Politicians will never, ever get it done." Many voters seem to be willing to give the businessman the benefit of the doubt on that.

In fact, the only blow that either Cruz or Rubio really landed Thursday night came when they gave up trying to question Trump's past dealings and turned attention to the fact that, no, he does not have any idea how to "get it done." Rubio pressed the bloviating billionaire to explain his health-care plan. Trump repeatedly said that he would "get rid of the lines around the states so that there's serious, serious competition," as though that were a complete answer.

At other points Thursday, Trump also promised to maintain Obamacare's ban on insurance companies rejecting people for preexisting conditions, and he promised not to let poor people die on the streets. This is not a health-care plan. It is a collection of slogans. How could insurance companies stay in business if they had to sell policies to all sick people but were not assured healthy people would buy in? How would he cover poor people? Offered the chance to expand on his health-care plan, Trump said, "No, there is nothing to add."

Rubio's health-care moment was the best any candidate had on stage all night. Trump has argued his way around a lot. But he cannot disguise his ignorance of policy --- when his opponents or the moderators bother to expose it.

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