“Never has a president been so regularly ignored or contradicted by his own officials,” Goldsmith added. “The president is a figurehead who barks out positions and desires, but his senior subordinates carry on with different commitments.”
Federal officials aren’t the only ones. Police chiefs distanced themselves from Trump’s public call for rougher treatment of criminal suspects; the White House said the president was joking.
The Boy Scouts apologized for Trump’s odd, politically charged remarks to the group. After Trump claimed in an interview that the Boy Scouts chief had called to declare it “the greatest speech ever made to them,” the Scouts organization disclaimed any such call.
The disconnect between Trump’s words and the government’s actions has been apparent for months. In January, after Defense Secretary James Mattis contradicted Trump on the use of torture, the president said he would acquiesce to Mattis’ view. The next month, after Trump pronounced himself open to something other than a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley corrected him and said the U.S. remains committed to a two-state solution.
But the phenomenon has grown more pronounced as Trump keeps struggling to govern amid special counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation.
Trump keeps casting doubt on Russia’s culpability for cyberattacks on the 2016 election campaign. His own national security officials, including Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats and CIA Director Mike Pompeo, said last month they have no doubts.
Trump has repeatedly expressed a lack of confidence in Attorney General Jeff Sessions over Sessions’ recusal from oversight of the Russia investigation. Sessions has ignored the hint that he resign.
