David Ignatius: I Don’t Know Whether Trump Is About Trying to Build the Country or If He Is Seeking Revenge

EXCERPT:

IGNATIUS: “I thought that today’s events were a piece of political theater. The right got to flex its muscles. Trump got to show everybody, ‘I’m in charge. I can make it happen.’ I think the interesting question, Jeff, is whether Trump really wants to set about being the leader of a governing party. He’s shown ways that he’s trying to be pragmatic, push the extreme right in his party down on the question of the H-1B visas, on questions of an abortion mandate, on some other cultural issues. He’s been pushing the right away and saying, ‘I’m going to govern myself,’ and I think he has the ambition to govern the whole country. He keeps saying it, you know, ‘This is a movement, there’s never been a president who can solve problems the way I can.’ I keep coming back to the question with Trump, whether he is about trying to build the country or seek revenge for the things that he feels were done to him. You see both of them — saw both of them today, actually, in a strange tweet in the very early morning hours as a kind of American carnage, and then this effort to rally the Congress around his chosen candidate as speaker. Which Trump is going to prevail after inauguration day? I couldn’t say.”

(via RealClearPolitics)