A wise psychoanalyst once told me (sort of): look at what Trump does, not what he says

A wise psychoanalyst once told me, “Stop looking at what you’re saying, look at what you’re doing.” I wish journalists applied a similar rule to Trump.

Yesterday, Trump said some whatever about the “archaic” rules of Congress, and this is what Aaron Blake, a journalist at The Washington Post, has to say in response:

Whether this is just him [Trump] blowing off steam or signaling what lies ahead, it’s significant. Because it suggests a president, yet again, who doesn’t agree with his own powers being limited or even questioned. Remember when senior policy adviser Stephen Miller declared “the powers of the president to protect our country are very substantial and will not be questioned?” This is more of that kind of attitude. He wants more power — and he wants it quickly. It’s not difficult to connect this to his past admiration for authoritarian leaders, and these comments are likely to give Democrats (and even some in the GOP establishment) plenty of heartburn. This is a demonstrated pattern for him, for all the reasons listed at the top of this post.

Oy. I know journalists (and academics like Timothy Snyder) love this narrative of Trump as authoritarian, but again, look at what he does, not what he says.

If Trump were serious about consolidating his power, he might start by, oh, I don’t know, consolidating his power. Because while Trump talks, this is what he’s doing, or not doing:

The Senate has confirmed 26 of Trump’s picks for his Cabinet and other top posts. But for 530 other vacant senior-level jobs requiring Senate confirmation, the president has advanced just 37 nominees….

That was according to a piece the other day in The Washington Post, the very newspaper Aaron Blake writes for. And this failure to consolidate executive power isn’t just in the agencies and departments Trump wants to gut. This is also in agencies and departments Trump wants to expand and empower. (I won’t even get into all the legislative battles Trump has lost. Some of which Blake has reported on.)

Whatever fantasies Trump may have about the presidency unbound, this man has almost no agenda for consolidating the power of the presidency. It’s a slogan, a rhetoric, a performance, but that’s it.

So for the last time: Look at what Trump does, not what he says.