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Barack Obama was comfortable rousing partisans with jabs at the GOP at a convention and singing "Amazing Grace" in Charleston, South Carolina.

Think back to FDR and it's easy to recognize that modern presidents have often shown the world different sides depending on the moment, but always in the context of a steady personality.

Then there is Donald Trump, who also has shown two sides, most dramatically in the past 10 days. After giving a measured statement last week condemning hatred and violence in Charlottesville, Virginia, he struck a wildly different tone in an exchange with reporters the next day, drawing widespread condemnation by appearing to equate the far right protesters in that city with those rallying against bigotry.

Then this Monday, he swung back to his earlier tone when, in a speech on his new Afghanistan policy, he condemned hatred and division.

Finally, having apparently strained to act appropriately on Monday, Donald Trump returned from his bad boy timeout Tuesday to address a Phoenix crowd as the familiar, raging and erratic character who appears at his rallies.

He once again bashed the mainstream press and senators in his own party. Then he distorted his record on the racial tragedy in Charlottesville, reminding the world that he lacks the moral core that has allowed previous presidents to display strong personalities while keeping faith with a nation that needs a stable leader.

The fact is, many presidents have been adept at showing different sides to different audiences, but all in the service of a sensible set of goals. Trump's wild tacking from one personality to the other is self-destructive.

If an instrument were devised to measure Trump's mood -- call it a Trumpometer -- it would generally register on the far right-hand side of the scale. This is where "Reckless Trump" muses about the "very fine people" who joined the recent march of the racists in Charlottesville, which culminated in a deadly vehicular attack on anti-hate demonstrators. Heather Heyer died, many more were injured.

Scripted Trump appears when the President is persuaded to accept a little discipline -- and a teleprompter. His first State of the Union speech was delivered with the aid of the machine and he got generally positive reviews.

By denying the facts about Russia's effort to influence the election, Trump neglected his duty to defend American democracy and respect the intelligence services that help safeguard the nation. He did, however, soothe his concern that others might see his election as tainted, and his ego requires this comfort. When Reckless Trump is in the room, it is easy to see that ego is his main concern.

Although Reckless Trump often sabotages his own agenda, he causes the greatest damage when he indulges himself on an issue that is vital to both public safety and national unity.

The Trump Tower performance was a wild swing away from the more reasonable statement he had made just the day before. It also fit a pattern. When Trump has chosen to moderate himself, to be more like other presidents, he has often snapped back almost immediately to his more combative identity.

For his Monday Afghanistan speech, he pulled himself together for the teleprompter session, which included a reminder that, "loyalty to our nation demands loyalty to one another. Love for America requires love for all of its people."

After all, this is the man who likes to keep people in suspense, wondering which version of him will appear, which has the effect of casting doubt upon every statement. Indeed, as if to prove he's not to be trusted, Trump followed his Monday peacemaking remarks with a trip to Phoenix, where local officials had asked him to stay away because they feared violent protests.

What were people upset about? Well, Trump was reportedly considering a pardon for recently convicted ex-sheriff Joseph Arpaio, whose anti-immigrant demagoguery has made him a living symbol of prejudice for many Americans.

"I've started to use them a little bit. They're not bad. You never get yourself in trouble when you use a teleprompter. You know, the problem is, it's too easy. We have a president who uses teleprompters. It's too easy. We should have non-teleprompter speeches only when you're running for president. You find out about people. The other way you don't find out about anybody."

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Donald Trump is a president at war with himself - CNN

President Trump speaks with newly sworn-in White House chief of staff John Kelly at the White House on July 31. Kelly is one of four former generals who were appointed to top administration positions. Jim Watson/AFP/Getty Images hide caption

President Trump speaks with newly sworn-in White House chief of staff John Kelly at the White House on July 31. Kelly is one of four former generals who were appointed to top administration positions.

When White House chief strategist Steve Bannon was pushed out of his job last week, it underscored the growing clout of President Trump's chief of staff, John Kelly, a retired Marine Corps general.

And when Trump announced he was increasing U.S. troops in Afghanistan on Monday, after suggesting for years that he wouldn't, administration officials were quick to note that he was heeding the advice of "the generals."

Trump, who attended the New York Military Academy as a teenager, has made clear he admires the toughness and discipline of military life and has appointed four former generals to top administration positions.

"I think that he likes the idea of military leadership, because military leadership is very decisive and audacious at times, and general officers are very good at simplifying problems and then getting the job done," said Thomas Kolditz, a retired brigadier general and the director of the Doerr Institute for New Leaders at Rice University.

While other administration figures have come and gone, Kelly, Defense Secretary James Mattis and national security adviser H.R. McMaster are still on the job, with varying degrees of power and influence. (A fourth general, Michael Flynn, held a brief, stormy tenure as national security adviser.)

But as much as Trump reveres the military, his own management style could put him in conflict with the very generals he has appointed.

Leadership is a core part of military service, and promising recruits are taught from the beginning how to inspire and command respect.

"The heart and soul of who we are in the military is about leadership, and leadership on a day-to-day basis but very importantly leadership in combat," said retired Marine Corps Gen. John Allen.

"So recruiting young men and women who have those skills early in their lives and then working hard to foster and nurture those skills are very important," he added.

Those qualities can make a big difference later on, when those men and women leave the military and venture into public life or the corporate world.

Former Procter & Gamble Chief Executive Robert McDonald attended West Point as a young man and later served five years in the Army, before leaving for a corporate job.

He had to make certain adjustments, he recalls. Because people in the Army move around so much, they're provided with manuals telling them how to do everything.

"So when I got to the Procter & Gamble Co., I went to my boss and I said, 'Where's the field manual that tells you how to organize your desk?' And of course they thought I was crazy," McDonald said.

But the leadership skills he learned in the military stayed with him throughout his career. McDonald likes to cite some words from the West Point Cadet Prayer.

"Those words are, 'Help me to choose the harder right rather than the easier wrong.' And it's remarkable, but in business as in life, the easier thing is usually the wrong thing to do," he said.

Carola Frydman and Efraim Benmelech, professors of finance at Northwestern University's Kellogg School of Management, have studied the track records of chief executives who served in the military.

Among their findings: CEOs who are also vets are more cautious about spending money on research and development, and they tend to commit less corporate fraud.

They also don't tend to do any better than other chief executives, the research suggests.

But Frydman and Benmelech say CEOs who are also vets do tend to perform better during economic downturns. They can be good in a crisis.

"They bring the capacity to operate under stress, and in so many cases, this stress has been tempered in the hot flame of war. And you just can't pay enough for that kind of experience," Allen said.

That may be one of the qualities that appeal to Trump, whose administration has been plagued by leaks, aborted policy initiatives and high-level staff defections.

But Kolditz notes that Trump may not fully grasp the ethos of public service and loyalty to the country that military officers are brought up in.

"Donald Trump's grown up in a scrappier place, where it was pretty much about making money for yourself, and he is brand new to public service," Kolditz said.

"Many of the things that Donald Trump expects from his people require [their ideas about public service] to be set aside for personal loyalty to Donald Trump. And so we're going to see this meeting of the minds, and I think it will be a process of consistent negotiation in how things happen," Kolditz added.

"What he's looking for is success," Allen said. "And so in his mind it would seem he has concluded that among the many other people that might come into the administration, retired generals offer perhaps a time-tried and battle-proven executive who can come into the administration and provide critical leadership in key positions.

"And with Kelly, Mattis and McMaster, he has certainly found three of the best and he has placed them I think in three pretty critical positions," Allen said.

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Why Donald Trump Likes To Surround Himself With Generals - NPR

We took a look at an energy claim President Donald Trump made at his rally in Phoenix on Aug. 22, 2017.

In a 75-minute rally speech that revisited his response to the Charlottesville, Va., unrest and scolded the national media, President Donald Trump slid in a note of pride about the United States balance of trade in energy.

"We're going to do an infrastructure bill," Trump said. "We will build gleaming new roads, bridges, highways, railways, waterways, all across our beautiful land. Our greatest creations, our most incredible buildings, our most beautiful works of art are just waiting to be brought to life. American hands will build this future. American energy will power this future. We have become an energy exporter for the first time ever just recently."

Was he correct to say that the United States has "become an energy exporter for the first time ever just recently"?

Short answer: No.

But to get to the short answer, you have to wade through several possible interpretations of what Trump meant. (The White House did not clarify his meaning for us.)

First possible meaning: The U.S. has just begun exporting energy

One way to read Trumps statement is to take it literally -- that the United States only recently began to export energy. This is flat wrong.

"We have been exporting coal, natural gas, electricity, refined products and energy technologies for a very long time," said Paul Sullivan, a professor at National Defense University and an adjunct professor at Georgetown University who specializes in energy security issues. "We were once, during the time of JD Rockefeller, the world's near monopoly on kerosene. Liquefied natural gas exports from Alaska to Japan have been around for a long time. Piped gas to Mexico and Canada are normal events. We have a massive electricity trade with Canada."

Second possible meaning: The U.S. is now a net energy exporter

Trump might have meant that the United States had only recently become a net exporter of energy -- meaning the total of all U.S. energy exports recently overtook the total of all U.S. energy imports. This is less wrong, but still not accurate.

"This has been falling, but we are still a huge net energy importer," said Jason Bordoff, who directs Columbia Universitys Center on Global Energy Policy.

In its most recent projections, the federal Energy Information Administration concluded that the United States would become a net energy exporter around 2026, depending on the course of future patterns of global supply, demand and pricing.

Whats clear is that the United States has not yet become a net exporter of energy, as Trumps past-tense remark indicated. If that day comes in 2026 -- and it may or may not -- that would be two years after Trump finishes a possible second term.

Third possible meaning: U.S. crude oil export ban lifted

Perhaps rather than "energy," Trump meant to say "crude oil."

If this is what Trump meant, the statement would still be problematic. It wouldnt be the first time "ever." And the relevant change was signed under his predecessor, President Barack Obama.

On Dec. 18, 2015, the United States enacted legislation to repeal a ban on most crude-oil exports that had been in place since the energy-crisis days of 1975. (Exports of refined petroleum were not blocked by the law, just crude.)

Heres a chart showing U.S. crude-oil exports going back to the 1980s. (The years between 1975 and 2015 show some export activity because trade with some countries, such as Canada, was exempt from the law.) The rapid rise in crude-oil exports near the end of the chart reflects the lifting of the export-restriction law.

Other possible meanings

Its possible to substitute any number of energy subcategories into Trumps remark to see whether they make the statement more accurate. Some do, some dont.

The United States has been a net coal exporter for many years. It has been a net exporter of refined petroleum products since around 2011. So neither of those would make Trump correct.

Natural gas is a more promising option. The United States is not yet a net exporter of natural gas, but the difference between imports and exports has narrowed for nine consecutive years, according to EIA, falling to its smallest gap ever in 2016. And the agency projects that the United States will become a net exporter of natural gas once the 2017 numbers are tallied up.

Energy experts say that this is a significant development, though one that Trump can take little credit for.

"It has been a trend that was activated by the U.S. shale boom and made possible by the Obama administration's policy on liquefied natural gas exports," said Anna Mikulska, a fellow with Rice Universitys Center for Energy Studies.

Ironically, Bordoff added, a different Trump policy goal -- reviewing Obama-era increases in fuel-efficiency standards for vehicles -- could make it harder for the United States to become a net exporter of energy, the very thing he applauded in Phoenix.

"Trumps stated intention to ease fuel economy standards actually undermines the goal of becoming a net energy exporter, because it means the U.S. will be consuming more oil than we would otherwise," he said. "The EIA projections assume the planned increases in fuel economy go into effect, so the EIA projection of when we become a net exporter of energy would be pushed further out if we weaken fuel economy standards."

Our ruling

Trump said that "we have become an energy exporter for the first time ever just recently."

This statement is problematic regardless of how you interpret his statement -- gross energy exports, net energy exports, gross crude-oil exports, and net natural gas exports. The closest he would come to being accurate is if he were referring to net natural gas exports, but even there, it hasnt happened yet, contrary to what his past-tense statement indicates. We rate the statement False.

Share the Facts

2017-08-23 21:33:46 UTC

2

1

7

False

http://time.com/4912055/donald-trump-phoenix-arizona-transcript/

"We have become an energy exporter for the first time ever just recently."

a rally in Phoenix

Tuesday, August 22, 2017

2017-08-22

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Donald Trump wrongly says US is a net energy exporter - PolitiFact

Tony Fabrizio, a GOP strategist who worked for President Trump's 2016 campaign, tweeted out a poll Wednesday arguing Donald Trump's invincibility in the 2020 election but the data he was showcasing told a different story.

The poll, conducted by Fabrizio's firm, Fabrizio, Lee and Associates, showed that if a Republican presidential primary were held today, just 50% of the GOP would be most likely to vote for Donald Trump. The poll found that 26% would choose among four other candidates.

Even though these results technically show that 50% of the Republican Party wants someone other than Trump to run in a presidential primary, Fabrizio treated the results as welcome news of the President's popularity, tweeting that he was "crushing" the primary field:

Among Trump's hypothetical challengers, support was split. The poll found that 14% would most likely to vote for Texas Senator Ted Cruz, 10% would vote for Ohio Governor John Kasich both of whom ran against Trump in the 2016 presidential primaries and 1% would vote for either Nebraska Senator Ben Sasse or Arkansas Senator Tom Cotton. Not everyone could make up their minds: 24% were undecided.

Historically, sitting Presidents rarely face serious primary challenges when they are running for reelection, although such instances have occurred, most notably Senator Ted Kennedy's insurgent run against Jimmy Carter in 1980. There is no indication Trump will not run; to the contrary, he has already filed paperwork laying the groundwork for the 2020 campaign. Trump has historically low approval ratings for this point in his tenure, according to multiple polls, leading some pundits to speculate he will face an intra-party challenge. Politico reported Tuesday, for example, that the Democratic National Committee is preparing opposition research on Kasich, Sasse, Vice President Mike Pence, and U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley. Kasich recently denied that he plans to run in 2020, telling CNN's Jake Tapper "I don't have any plans to do anything like that."

Polls this far out from a primary are notoriously unreliable. The survey was conducted among 1,500 voters who either described themselves as GOP or leaning GOP. The margin of error is 2.5 percentage points.

Fabrizio joined Trump's campaign as pollster after working for Rand Paul in the 2016 presidential primaries, TIME reported in June 2016. After sparking a firestorm on political Twitter, Fabrizio posted a Gallup poll from September 2010 showing that Hillary Clinton with the support of 37% of Democrats in the 2012 primary, while Barack Obama had 52%.

Though a poll from a month later showed Obama with 64% support.

Continue reading here:
Donald Trump's Campaign Pollster Tweeted Out a Poll That Is Not Great for the President - TIME

It's a major test for Trump -- particularly given that there appears to be such a marked difference between Teleprompter Trump who was on display Monday night in his Afghanistan speech and Campaign Trump. Previous attempts at restarting a new -- and more politic -- version of the Trump Administration have been dashed along the rocks of the President's desire to be applauded and loved by his base.

It's a reality that has caused the Republican party -- and, really, the entire political world -- to suffer from a permanent case of whiplash.

2. The Cleveland Browns

At a campaign rally in Kentucky (sound familiar?) in March, Trump attributed the fact that Kaepernick had not yet been signed by an NFL team to a fear of his wrath.

Given Trump's both-sides-do-it response to the violence caused by white supremacists and neo-Nazis in Charlottesville, a riff on the Browns -- or Kaepernick -- would be, um, inadvisable.

3. Louise Linton

Trump -- ever loyal to those who are loyal to him -- might be tempted to defend Linton. "She's a great lady -- and elegant too!," or something like that.

Bad idea. No one likes the guy defending the rich and entitled from the average Joe (or Jane).

4. John McCain and Jeff Flake

There's no question that a few ad hominem attacks against Flake and/or McCain would be well received by the assembled masses there to hear Trump speak tonight. But, he needs to understand that simply giving people what they want for a cheap applause high can badly undermine his efforts to unify his party behind things like tax reform, the budget and the debt ceiling. Attacking Flake and McCain in their home state would be Trump cutting off his nose to spite his face. Which, if past is prologue, he's uniquely capable of doing.

5. The eclipse photos

By not mentioning Eclipse-gate, Trump can keep it that way. But, it may be hard for him to resist using the episode as yet more evidence of the media's terrible and horrible biases against him.

"They said I looked into the sun without the glasses on!," you can imagine Trump saying. "And I didn't."

Spoiler alert: He did.

6. Steve Bannon

Trump cares deeply about his media coverage and watches Breitbart along with the Daily Caller and the Drudge Report very, very closely. And he won't be happy -- at all -- about his former aide taking pot shots at him.

But, there's zero to be gained by going after Bannon. Conservative media -- led by Breitbart -- have been an incredible ally for Trump, and will be again. Why alienate them over one day of bad headlines?

Plus, talking about staffing and process is the surest way to lose a crowd. "Did you see what a guy who used to work for me said?," is not exactly the world's greatest applause line.

7. The electoral map

As you may have heard, Trump won the electoral college when no one said he could. They said it was impossible to do. But he did it. And, yes, he won Arizona -- by 3.5 points -- in 2016.

As you may have also heard, the 2016 election was 287 days ago. Trump was inaugurated as the 45th president of the United States 214 days ago.

Spending any time at all about how he won a historic victory makes it look like Trump is still living off past glories. Which believe me -- a guy who once scored 30 points in a 6th grade basketball game -- is not a good look.

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7 things Donald Trump shouldn't talk about in Arizona tonight (but probably will) - CNN