Wow, Trump Actually Comes Within Shouting Distance of Empathy During His 60 Minutes Interview

3 min readThe president did an interview with 60 Minutes correspondent Ross Douthat. (And may I say on behalf of American journalism all the way back to Zenger, "Oy.") The president's mind seemed to be functioning much like a Tilt-a-Whirl at a county fair. At one point, Douthat called him out on his stock-jobbing in office, and the president stayed very much in character, replying, quite douche-edly, "Then you should have owned stock." Thanks, pal.In addition, the bulk of the interview danced to the tune of how the Republicans failed him, Donald Trump, ender of all wars, savior of Israel, and god-emperor of the Middle East. This kind of thing grew tiresome at half-past 2016 and wasn't worth watching Douthat trying to keep things on track. But, then, this happened:PREISDENT DONALD TRUMP: And I think you would agree that I get an A+ for that. I get an A+ for closing. Nobody—in the last 17 months, just came out, zero people came in through our southern border, as opposed to 25 million people—25 million people. They came in through caravans. Nobody ever saw anything like it. Okay. For getting people out, I get very high marks for getting the bad ones out. But I get hurt because we also took people that had good jobs, that—that created one violation, or breaking of the law, and that was that they came into the country illegally.Now, there is a large part of the country that think that they should be put out. And there's a large part of the country that think that they should be allowed to stay if they're good people working in a landscaping company, or workin' in a hotel, or doing something, right? And in some cases, paying taxes. And there's a large group of people [who] think that they should be allowed to stay. So--ROSS DOUTHAT: So—so you think your deportation policy—PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: I think it was—ROSS DOUTHAT: —went too far—PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: —too tough.ROSS DOUTHAT: It was too tough?PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: I think it might be too tough, yeah. And a lotta people would say that it's great. But a lotta people think it's too tough. ... When you go into a hotel and you say, "Let me see your pass," and you have a woman that's worked there as a—you know, as a maid, as a cleaner, as a this, as a that, as a waitress, a lotta good things, great job, and all of a sudden, they're being taken outta the country, it's tough. It's a tough thing. Also, 25 million people came in through Biden. That's a lotta people to take out. But there's a group of people that I would say on the sort of pretty far right that would like everybody taken out.It is for moments like this that the phrase, "Wait, what?" was first spokenThis is almost within shouting distance of both introspection and empathy. He's really feeling for the deported landscapers who should have been allowed to stay so he could hire them and then not pay them. It also proves that he's been listening to those optimistic voices—which for the moment include Bernie Sanders, of all people—who believe that the president might approve some Democratic priorities as long as he could slap his name on them. (Branding is his only business talent, after all.) I would like to believe this, too, but, then there's this. From The Guardian.The announcement came just days after voters overwhelmingly elected Democrats in the U.S. midterm elections, a sharp rebuke of Trump’s agenda that ended his Republican Party’s control of US Congress. “For Trump to promote this hatemonger shows he has learned nothing,” Dick Durbin, a Democratic senator from Illinois, wrote on X. Chuck Schumer, who is expected to become Senate majority leader, said Trump “learned nothing from his historic defeat” and “couldn’t have made a worse choice” in elevating Miller.Ah, bipartisanship.