Understanding Trump

by Newt Gingrich

  This ability to puncture conventional wisdom is important because much of the conventional wisdom in Washington is dumb. The way things are done are a product of habit rather than utility, and sustained by an echo chamber of establishment talking heads spouting nonsense on television, radio, and other sources.

  A perfect example was the ridiculous uproar when it came out that Trump had decided to stop receiving daily intelligence briefings, opting instead for briefings two to three times per week. Washington was beside itself from this break from tradition. Didn’t Trump care about national security?

  Trump broke up this nonsense quickly, explaining that the briefing was so repetitive that it was a waste of time. His instructions were to brief him only on new developments. Of course, this model makes more sense than the most powerful person in the world spending an hour a day being told the same things he was told yesterday.

  The problem of the commander in chief and senior military leaders drowning in detail affects far more than just intelligence briefings.

  The way we have handled ISIS is a perfect example. The National Command—which includes the highest-ranking members of our military and the president—has focused far too much on ISIS without dealing with the larger issue of radical Islamic terrorism. We’ve done this for years. First we fought Al-Qaeda, then the Iraqi insurgency, and now we are focusing on ISIS. We have been fighting terrorists one front at a time, and the result is a game of Whac-A-Mole that has done nothing to end global radical Islamic terrorism or stabilize the Middle East.

  By way of comparison, imagine if we had treated the invasion of Guadalcanal in 1942 the way we have dealt with ISIS. We never would have won World War II. In World War II, we thought globally. The invasion of Guadalcanal was handled by forces and commanders on the ground in communication with the top brass, but the National Command was worried about bigger-picture problems. For example, the number of oil tankers and freight ships available in 1942 was absolutely critical. That was worth the National Command focusing on. And when it was solved, the National Command moved on to tackling the next global problem. We didn’t try to micromanage ground operations from Washington, DC. Fortunately, the highest levels of our military then thought globally about all fronts of the war and let commanders on the ground deal with day-to-day conditions.

  President Trump must resist the news media’s and the political establishment’s demand that he drown himself in unnecessary details. Failure to do so will paralyze his presidency.

  This was a principle I first learned by observing President Reagan. I eventually developed a metaphor called the “antelope and chipmunk” theory of leading to describe his approach, and it is one that I have shared with President Trump and his team.

  It goes like this: The president must be a lion. Lions cannot hunt chipmunks, because even if they catch them the lions will starve to death. Instead, lions must hunt antelopes—big animals—to survive.

  President Reagan was a lion. He was focused on three things: defeating the Soviet Union, growing the American economy, and reviving the American spirit. Those were his antelopes, and he refused to get bogged down in chipmunks.

  Every time a chipmunk ran into his office, President Reagan would listen patiently, and then say, “Have you met my chief of staff?” That’s how Jim Baker amassed the largest chipmunk collection in the world.

  I have been encouraged to see that President Trump, as commander in chief, is focused on the antelope and is not getting drowned by chipmunks. One of his first actions as president was to give more authority to military commanders to conduct strikes against terrorist targets in certain areas. He knows that terrorists move around constantly, so speed is of the essence. He doesn’t need to add an extra layer of decision making. Instead, President Trump set a clear strategic directive to be more aggressive in hunting down targets and is letting his military commanders handle the tactics.

  Meanwhile, when President Trump uses his voice to discuss national security, he has mostly kept the focus on the big picture—defeating radical Islamic terrorism, as well as standing up for American values. We can expect to see a much faster, operationally flexible and strategically focused national security apparatus under President Trump.

  PRO-AMERICAN

  Donald Trump is anti-Left, anti-stupid, and anti-PC. This allows him to be aggressively pro-American, the final part of the four-sided table that explains Donald Trump’s philosophy.

  The clearest expression of Trump’s pro-American stance is his America-first approach to foreign policy and trade.

  As soon as he took office, President Trump began work securing our border and returning the rule of law to our immigration system.

  It was baffling. Even if we set the threat of terrorism aside, heroin and opioid abuse is devastating communities across the nation. And the US Drug Enforcement Administration has said most of the drugs in the United States have entered the country by being smuggled across the southern border. What reasonable person would say signing an executive order to hire up to ten thousand more US Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers and up to five thousand more US Border Patrol agents was a bad idea?

  President Trump also signed orders to cut federal funding to so-called sanctuary cities like Chicago and Los Angeles, where instead of immediately turning criminal aliens who are released from police custody over to immigration officials, the crooks are let back out onto the streets.

  Leaders in cities granting asylum to such criminals immediately doubled-down on protecting criminal aliens from law enforcement.

  “We’re very clear about our values and very clear about our priorities,” said Chicago’s mayor, Rahm Emanuel, according to a Chicago Sun-Times article on March 28.

  Chicago had over seven hundred murders and over four thousand shootings in 2016. Given the carnage, I am curious what the people of Chicago think about Mayor Emanuel prioritizing the imagined rights of criminal noncitizens over public safety.

  PRO-AMERICAN SPIRIT

  The most important part of Trump’s pro-American principle—which has received almost no media coverage—is his desire to make America great again for all people and heal racial divides here at home.

  You can see Trump’s desire to unify the country in a speech he gave as a candidate in October 2016 in Charlotte, North Carolina, entitled “A New Deal for African Americans.”

  African American citizens have sacrificed so much for this nation. They have fought and died in every war since the Revolution, and from the pews and the picket lines they have lifted up the conscience of our country in the long march for Civil Rights.… I have heard and have listened to the concerns raised by African American citizens about our justice system, and I promise that under a Trump administration the law will be applied fairly, equally and without prejudice. There will only be one set of rules—not a two-tiered system of justice.

  This is just the beginning. Because I will never, ever take the African American community for granted. It will be my mission to prove to this country that yesterday does not have to be tomorrow. The cycle of poverty can be broken, and great new things can happen for our people.

  Trump’s final message in Charlotte perfectly framed his pledge: “Together, we will have a government of, by and for the people. And we will make America great again for all Americans.”

  He gave a similar speech a month earlier in Detroit, Michigan.

  These speeches were part of a pattern in which Trump actively met and communicated with members of African American communities. The elite media largely ignored these two speeches, because they had been convinced by past polls that Trump would not make great gains with black voters.

  But what the media missed was the clear message Trump sent to all Americans: that he wanted to unify the country by directly appealing to African Americans. By speaking so openly and candidly with black voters about their concerns and the issues that impact their communities, Trump also blunted most of the left-wing fear tactics Democrats have used for decades wi
th African American voters. These two speeches made it much more difficult for the Left to demonize Trump to turn black voters against him in states where he was competing with smaller margins.

  He carried on his message of unity in his inaugural address, saying, “It is time to remember that old wisdom our soldiers will never forget: that whether we are black or brown or white, we all bleed the same red blood of patriots, we all enjoy the same glorious freedoms, and we all salute the same great American flag.”

  With these words, he flipped the Left’s narrative that patriotism and nationalism are akin to racism. To Trump, it is impossible to be both patriotic and racist, because of our shared love of America. He continued this line of thought:

  And whether a child is born in the urban sprawl of Detroit or the windswept plains of Nebraska, they look up at the same night sky, they fill their heart with the same dreams, and they are infused with the breath of life by the same almighty Creator. So, to all Americans, in every city near and far, small and large, from mountain to mountain, and from ocean to ocean, hear these words: You will never be ignored again.

  These are clear messages that seek to uplift and bring together everyone in America. It doesn’t get more pro-America than that.

  My wife, Callista, and I belong to Trump National Golf Club in Virginia. It is a beautiful property along the Potomac River. Before he was a candidate, every once in a while, Trump would helicopter in from New York, play a round, and then have dinner. He would often be alone and invite us to join him. He would ask how the club felt to us as members. What did we think of the new layout? How was the kitchen? Were the staff friendly and responsive? He was very proud of Trump National, and he would discuss his vision to create a challenging course that would attract PGA competitions. He invested millions in redoing the entire golf course to make its holes more competitive and to ensure great views for television coverage. The course now has the PGA Senior Championship for 2017. Every time we saw Trump at the club, he wanted it to be a great club. He loves it. Making America great again is a natural outgrowth of how Trump thinks of everything he does.

  CHAPTER THREE

  WINNING, BIG LEAGUE

  Understanding Trump’s philosophy will get you only so far. To really grasp Trump, you must understand his doctrine and his psychology—the collection of attitudes and methods he uses to achieve success. That doctrine is fast, aggressive, disruptive, and confounding to the unwary.

  He places a greater emphasis on speed than mistake avoidance, sets big goals and remains flexible. He capitalizes on his opponents’ weaknesses and works relentlessly to diminish or avoid their strengths. From the outside, it appears chaotic, but by all measure—Trump’s success in the real estate, hotel, television, and golf course businesses, and his winning the presidency—the Trump Doctrine is effective.

  Trump does not believe it is possible to plan so much that you completely avoid mistakes, and to him it’s a waste of time to try. This is the total opposite of the way bureaucratic Washington works. Look at NASA as an organization. They’ve become so good at planning to get to Mars that by the time its astronauts are ready to fly there, it will probably be easier just to stack all their plans and climb.

  Part of NASA’s problem is that it has lost the ability to make mistakes. The Wright Brothers failed five hundred times over five years before they flew. NASA would have cut them off around the third failure. It’s a fundamentally different model. The Trump model is to move very rapidly, and if you make a mistake, figure it out and respond so quickly that it doesn’t hurt very much.

  During Trump’s first address to a joint session of Congress, he laid out a vision to put “American footprints on distant worlds.” That won’t happen without big changes at NASA, and I predict President Trump will make them.

  When he first took office, Washington, DC, was not ready for his Manhattan pace. The media and the establishment wailed that he had brought too much chaos and disorder to the White House. What he really brought was a long-overdue disruption and the start of clear progress.

  What no one in the elite class seems to understand is that Trump’s fast-paced style is an important part of his strategy to break up decades-old power structures in Washington and get things done. During the campaign, we would discuss the importance of the first few days of his presidency. Trump knew from taking over properties and projects that setting the pace and the intensity from the very beginning was vital. Six months before the election, he was already thinking about a series of executive orders for the first few days. He also knew from the reaction of his crowds that his supporters wanted immediate action.

  Trump must keep going at breakneck speed to keep his opponents on the Left and in the media off balance. If he slows down to let the elites catch up, he will lose some of his advantage. That must not happen, because only by moving faster than the entrenched system will Trump be able to make America great again—especially for the millions of American Trump supporters the Left and the establishment had happily forgotten.

  OODA—LOOP: BRINGING JET FIGHTER TACTICS TO WASHINGTON

  Trump operates more like an entrepreneur launching a start-up than a traditional executive. This means he is constantly looking for the next opportunity, acting quickly, and continually assessing results. His model reinforces success, starves failure, and requires very fast feedback. This is similar to what the military calls an OODA loop, which stands for observe, orient, decide, act, and then loop back to observe again. The theory was developed by US Air Force Col. John Boyd, a celebrated military strategist who studied fighter jet combat, specifically how the American F-86 Sabre fought Soviet-made MiG-15s in Korea.

  The first step is to observe what’s going on, then quickly orient yourself to the situation, make a decision about what to do, act faster than your opponent, and then pivot back to observing. By doing this repeatedly, you will inevitably build up a momentum that your opponent can’t cope with. Since Boyd developed it for the military, the strategy has been applied to business, litigation, law enforcement—and now Trump has applied it to politics. I don’t know if Trump learned this method during the five years he was in the New York Military Academy or if he just picked it up after years of sparring over New York real estate, but he clearly applies it.

  You saw this on the campaign, when he was constantly outmaneuvering his opponents and setting the tone of the entire race. He would go to rallies, see what topics evoked the most reaction from the crowds, orient his focus to those issues, decide what his best message was based on those reactions, and then act on them. Most often, that action would be in the form of a tweet designed to capture the news media’s attention. Then he would immediately switch back to observing to see how his tweets or comments were perceived by his supporters.

  He could never have been this nimble if he had had an army of consultants and policy advisers attempting to direct his every move. Normally, a candidate may have a good idea about a reaction to some event, so he will tell one of his consultants, and that person will take it to the team to ponder. Each member of the team has to make his or her own edits—because that’s what consultants are paid for. By the time the team-approved response is ready, the moment is gone—and it looks nothing like what the candidate originally wanted to say. Trump bypassed all that with his lean staff. He was his own primary consultant.

  This method also helped him decide not to use paid TV advertising. Consultants love TV advertising because they often get a percentage of the placement. Jeb Bush’s consultants made substantial money placing ads that didn’t work. Hillary’s consultants must have made tens of millions of dollars. There is no penalty for incompetence or malpractice among political consultants.

  Since Trump was his own consultant and he was paying for a substantial part of his own campaign, he had no reason to be stuck with obsolete, ineffective techniques. He decided paid television ads were expensive and inauthentic. He concluded that his personal appearances were far more effective than paid ads. He saw Faceboo
k and Twitter working. So, he decided to use Facebook and Twitter as his main vehicles for media outreach. He then trained the media to cover all his tweets, and suddenly he was getting millions in earned coverage at no cost.

  The OODA loop also enabled Trump to identify and avoid his opponents’ strengths and exploit their weaknesses. In the early days of the campaign, when he was learning how to be a candidate and learning how to debate, you could see him doing all this instinctively. He would watch each of his opponents in the debates and measure them. He was very quiet most of the time. He watched all the candidates on the stage, and also the media. The whole time, he was observing each of his competitors and thinking, “How do I avoid the thing you’re really good at? What’s your weakness? How do I go after it?”

  As president, he has been following the same order of operations. As soon as he took office, he took action by signing a slew of executive orders. These were based on what he had observed over the course of his campaign. Now, as president, he is running many different OODA loops at the same time for each of his orders and legislative efforts—border protection, ending sanctuary cities, tax reform, and so forth.

  He observes, orients, makes a decision, and acts. And he has also combined this effective military strategy with another talent from his business expertise—branding.

  BRANDING, NOT ATTACKING

  Branding is different from attacking. Branding is about establishing an identity. It can be an incredibly effective tool politically. The Left has maintained the support of minorities—despite its being utterly incompetent and doing nothing to help them—simply because it has worked so hard at branding Republicans and conservatives as racists.