WASHINGTON — In what would be a political makeover for the ages, Donald Trump says that soon after he takes the oath of office next month, he will cast himself as something remarkable: a unifier.
The theme of his inaugural speech? “Unity,” he told Kristen Welker, moderator of NBC News’ “Meet the Press,” in a recent interview.
“It makes you happy: unity,” he said. “It will be a message of unity.”
What that means in practice is still a mystery. Trump came to power in 2016 thanks to a divided electorate. He lost the White House four years later and won it back last month by delivering much the same tough message in much the same blunt language.
At 78, Trump has no plans to reinvent himself, nor has he given any sign of reconsidering the polarizing positions he has taken on mass deportations or pardoning those who stormed the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021, when Congress counted the electoral votes. votes confirming Joe Biden’s victory.
He remains downright bitter about the way he says he has been wronged by judges, prosecutors, Democratic officials and the news media. In the interview in which he called for unity, he named members of the House of Representatives who investigated the Jan. 6 attack and said they should be jailed.
“We are not in a happy, bad time,” Steve Bannon, a senior White House adviser during Trump’s first term, said in an interview. “Kamala Harris’s ‘joy policy’ has failed. Why? Because the lived experience of Americans right now is not joyful. That’s why Trump won by a landslide.”
Still, some Trump advisers say he is sincere about wanting to bridge the political divide. They said he is uniquely positioned to do so as he completes his final campaign and hopes to carve out a favorable place in history.
Something unexpected happened during the November 5 elections. Voting blocs that had previously shunned Trump gave him a fresh look. He made gains among Hispanic and black voters in key states normally part of the Democratic coalition as he won the popular vote for the first time in his three tries.
A Pew Research Center survey conducted after the election found that most Americans approved of Trump’s plans for the future. While a majority doubted Trump could bring about a détente between red and blue America, a larger share had warmer feelings about him than at the end of the 2016 and 2020 elections.
“After essentially overcoming the Democratic Party in Congress and [won the] I think he sees that there is a great opportunity here for bipartisanship and breakthroughs,” said Dick Morris, an informal political adviser to Trump over the years and once a campaign adviser to Bill Clinton. “And I think he feels that people on both sides are exhausted by conflict and that there is a real opportunity for him to open a new front.”
John McLaughlin, a Trump pollster, said it would be a mistake to dismiss his call for national rapprochement out of hand.
“As a businessman, Trump is not a typical politician,” McLaughlin said in an interview. ‘When he tells you something, he is very direct, and you have to take his word for it.
“He’s going to try to unite the country,” McLaughlin continued. “Trump only gets one term. There will be opposition against him. But he would like to have a historic presidency and achieve more for the country.”
Connecting a fractured nation is a goal that recent presidents have shared and none has achieved. Americans are in a bad mood: worried about the future and dissatisfied with political leadership, polls show. One of the few points of agreement is the collective belief that the country’s political system is broken, surveys show.
Biden mentioned “unity” nearly a dozen times in his 2021 inaugural address, yet two-thirds of Americans now believe the country has become more polarized since he took office, a Monmouth University poll found.
A starting point for Trump could be to clarify what he means when he says he wants to narrow the political divide.
Does this mean, in his view, that his rivals should suppress their policy concerns and align themselves with his agenda? Or does this mean he will compromise with Democratic lawmakers and end attacks on those who challenge him?
“No one ever got rich betting that Donald Trump will do the right thing, because he never does,” said Matt Bennett, co-founder of Third Way, a center-left think tank.
Karoline Leavitt, a spokeswoman for the Trump transition, said in a statement: “President Trump will serve ALL Americans, even those who did not vote for him in the election. He will unite the country through success.”
With millions of people watching live, the inauguration would be the obvious forum for Trump to push for healing, rather than stoking national divisions.
Every president hopes that at least part of his inaugural address will be memorable. Abraham Lincoln’s two speeches in preparation for the Civil War reached poetic heights. Ronald Reagan’s 1981 speech set the tone for the new administration: “In this current crisis, government is not the solution to our problem; The government is the problem.”
Trump’s first inaugural address was best remembered for the term “American carnage.” After he finished, a bewildered former President George W. Bush remarked, “That was an odd comment….”
Bannon advised Trump to try something new this time — a gesture that could unite the right, left and center, given the intense dissatisfaction with the lawmakers who will be sitting on the podium directly behind him.
“The only thing I would advise President Trump, if he wants to unite the country, is to turn the stage halfway through the speech, face the Washington DC political class that is on the rise and read them the riot act .” Bannon said. “Tell them things are about to change, there’s a new sheriff in town. Then turn around and finish the speech to the American people. That will unite the country.”
Often the high-minded prose of an inaugural address is quickly forgotten in the rush to get the new presidency off the ground.
The ultimate test will not so much be the words Trump speaks from the teleprompter, but the actions he takes over the next four years, analysts said.
Ted Widmer, a speechwriter in the Clinton White House and now a professor of history at the City University of New York, said in an interview: “If ‘unity’ was followed by actual policies that promote unity — like bringing Democrats into office cabinet and working with Democrats in Congress on legislation that meets the needs and wants of many different types of Americans – that would be great. But no one expects that. It’s already busy and he’s not even president yet. He only nominates extremists to his cabinet.”
This article was originally published on NBCNews.com
