Source: NBC News
WASHINGTON — A few hours before Mississippi Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith’s debate with Democratic challenger Mike Espy last month, at a time when Republicans were taking a hit to their brand because of her remarks about attending a “public hanging,” President Donald Trump called the freshman lawmaker with an admittedly awkward request.
Trump urged her to apologize, two Republicans briefed on their conversation told NBC News. As political wisdom, the advice itself was unremarkable, except for its source: a man who — as he acknowledged to Hyde-Smith during the call, one of the sources said — doesn’t follow it. At all.
That tendency may have made him an imperfect messenger, he conceded — but as he laid it out, he was the exception that proved the rule: he didn’t have to apologize. Ever. But she did.
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Hyde-Smith, well aware that Trump still had two planned campaign stops to make for her, did as she was asked. She scrambled to put together a carefully crafted statement for the debate and then offered a qualified apology on stage.
There’s little reason to think the episode affected the outcome of the election — Hyde-Smith won by 8 percentage points — but it highlighted the tension between Trump’s personal code of conduct and what some view as the best way for him, and for his party, to appeal to persuadable voters he’s alienated as he seeks re-election: Admit errors — and use that exercise to reach out to a broader audience.
That process could be his best shot at reclaiming swing voters who gave him the benefit of the doubt two years ago, but have since become disenchanted.
It’s also completely antithetical to the political instincts that have served Trump well with his base.“His general philosophy is you get no credit for an apology, so don’t do it,” said one person who advised Trump’s 2016 campaign.
Trump is viewed as only ever apologizing once during his political career — after the October 2016 release of an “Access Hollywood” out-take in which he could be heard saying that he liked to grope women without their consent. But even that mea culpa rates an asterisk.
Trump, speaking direct to camera, called his remarks “locker room” talk. He then went on the attack.
The performance was evidence, the campaign adviser said, of Trump “succumbing to every single person around him” in agreeing to issue a semi-apology.
“He even turned that into ‘this isn’t an apology,'” the adviser said.
But Doug Schoen, a former adviser to President Bill Clinton and a Fox News contributor, said that while Trump’s approach worked against Hillary Clinton, he now needs to change tacks, reach out beyond his political base and compromise. Part of that process, he said, is acknowledging mistakes.
“His base is now too small and eroding too quickly to govern effectively and win re-election,” Schoen said. “People respect politicians who acknowledge they can make mistakes.”
With Trump’s job approval sitting at 39 percent in the latest Gallup poll, there’s little question that he has plenty of room to improve his standing with the American public before voters go to the polls in November 2020.
Backtracking, but never saying ‘I’m sorry.’
There are a few corollaries to Trump’s no-apologies policy. One is that Trump often reverses course or alters his direction without pausing to say that he was wrong in the first place.
On his signature issue, a border wall with Mexico, he made a handshake deal last year with congressional Democrats to permanently extend protections for undocumented immigrants brought to the U.S. illegally as children in exchange for full funding of the wall, only to back out and issue a spate of new demands for limiting…
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