By Allegra Kirkland:
The Donald Trump who took questions from reporters Tuesday in his first press conference as President-elect was the same combative, short-tempered figure the American public saw on the 2016 campaign trail, down to the red power tie.
The President-elect personally dressed-down a CNN reporter in scathing terms. He limited his comments on what a replacement plan for Obamacare would look like to a vague promise to “repeal and replace” the healthcare law “essentially simultaneously.” His responses were cheered on enthusiastically by a small group of staffers.
In short, two months after winning the White House in a historic upset and nine days out from Inauguration Day, Trump appeared no closer to adhering to the norms that have traditionally regulated the office he is poised to assume.
Russell Riley, associate professor at the University of Virginia’s nonpartisan Miller Center of presidential scholarship, told TPM that Trump’s remarks demonstrated a “personalization that you just do not see in the history of the presidency.”
“There’s no question that the candidate was elected largely because he was seen as someone who was willing to be confrontational and willing to explode a lot of the norms of American politics,” Riley said. “I think the voters found that appealing because there was a sense that he would take that approach with him into the office."
"But I think there also has been an expectation that at some point those inclinations to blow up norms would be converted in service of a specific set of programs—that the destruction of what went before would eventually give way to the construction of what he expects to do once he’s in office," he continued.
The Full Story (January 11, 2017)
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