Has he done anything like this before? I know he’s teased major decisions in tweets, saying “I’ll be making an announcement next week” or words to that effect, but I can’t remember an honest-to-goodness commercial touting an upcoming nomination. If memory serves, the most showmanship he displayed before naming Gorsuch to the Court was, er, inviting the other finalist, Tom Hardiman, to come to D.C. on the same day to create suspense over which of them was the pick. No promo, though.
Maybe the next SCOTUS nominee announcement will merit a LeBron-esque hour-long special on C-SPAN. POTUS is, after all, a showman at heart.
Even when he’s among U.S. senators:
President Trump on Tuesday asked Republican senators to vote their preference for a new Federal Reserve chairman with a show of hands.
Several GOP senators said Trump asked them to pick between Federal Reserve Governor Jerome Powell and Stanford University economist John Taylor when he attended their closed-door policy lunch on Tuesday…
Rounds said Trump only asked about Powell and Taylor, and that most senators simply smiled instead of raise a hand for either candidate.
Sen. Bob Corker (R-Tenn.), amid a bitter feud with Trump, said he declined to participate because “I don’t think that’s a very good way of picking a Fed chair.”
Tough crowd, although maybe Trump thinks he needs to put some extra effort into building excitement for a new Fed chair. Markets will react but how’s the average working-class voter supposed to have a preference between Jerome Powell and John Taylor? When there’s no natural suspense to a decision this big, suspense must be manufactured.
Did Obama ever do something like this, incidentally? If he didn’t, Trump’s successors sure will.
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