Along with saying the word “fuck” at least three times throughout the meeting, the president bizarrely stated that he did not want to call the partial government shutdown a “shutdown,” according to [a] source. Instead, he referred to it as a “strike.” (Many of the federal employees affected by the weeks-long shutdown have been working without pay. That is essentially the opposite of a strike.)As I noted just before Christmas, Trump believes he's a branding expert. He's tried to sell the wall to the public by describing it as "artistically designed steel slats," and by compelling agencies to refer to it as "wall," without the definite article "the" ("“DHS is committed to building wall and building wall quickly”). Prior to that, Paul Ryan's office asked the White House for naming advice when the GOP tax bill was in the works, and the president suggested that it be called "the Cut Cut Cut Act." (The suggestion was rejected, in favor of "the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act.")
Trump clearly believes that none of his policies are inherently unpopular -- all they need in order to be widely acclaimed is his own marketing brilliance. That marketing brilliance, of course, consists of lying. The wall is not a wall. The shutdown is the fault of its victims. The appropriate name for a bill that ultimately raises taxes on every income bracket under $75,000 a year is "Cut Cut Cut."
Trump still believes that he and his party bear absolutely no responsibility for his lousy poll numbers. He's certain that the mainstream media and his own staff are conspiring to prevent his branding brilliance from winning the day. If everyone would just do what he says on every matter, great and small, he'd be at 100% approval and win a fifty-state landslide in 2020. It's just not fair.
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