From Politico, here's White House budget director Mick Mulvaney publicly bragging about how he snowed Donald Trump into accepting Social Security cuts because Donald Trump is just that dumb.
“Look, this is my idea on how to reform Social Security,” the former South Carolina congressman began.
“No!” the president replied. “I told people we wouldn’t do that. What’s next?”
“Well, here are some Medicare reforms,” Mulvaney said.
“No!” Trump repeated. “I’m not doing that.”
“OK, disability insurance.”
This was a clever twist. Mulvaney was talking about the Social Security Disability Insurance program, which, as its full name indicates, is part of Social Security. But Americans don’t tend to think of it as Social Security, and its 11 million beneficiaries are not the senior citizens who tend to support Trump.
“Tell me about that,” Trump replied.
“It’s welfare,” Mulvaney said.
“OK, we can fix welfare,” Trump declared.
Got it? So Mulvaney is bragging about how Trump wouldn't cut Social Security, but all Mick had to do was change the phrase to dodge the fact that he was talking about cutting Social Security, and boom—the twit bought it. The plan to cut $70 billion from the Social Security program was approved.
And he's telling this story in public because, well, who can say? Apparently Mick Mulvaney thinks making Trump look like a chump will work out better for him than it has for any of the other top staffers that peeved Trump with criticism, or insufficient flattery, or the inability to control CNN camera angles so as to best flatter the pretzeldent.
The episode suggests Trump was either ignorant enough to get word-gamed into attacking a half-century-old guarantee for the disabled, or cynical enough to ditch his promise to protect spending when it didn’t benefit his base.
Well, at least we're all on the same page here. Yes, yes it does suggest that.