Trump's Big CON: His 'Successful' Business Experience Will Make Him a Great Government Leader

UPDATE:  The "event was part of a familiar pattern for Trump.

When he finds himself under attack or slipping in popularity, he often holds a rally in a place like this: a diverse blue city that’s home to liberal protesters but surrounded by red suburbs and rural towns filled with Trump supporters who will turn out in droves.

It happened in the first weeks of his presidential campaign, when he was dismissed as a sideshow and criticized for his comments on undocumented immigrants — only to be greeted by thousands of fans, along with protesters, at a rally at the convention center.

Then in March 2016, when Trump grew frustrated that he still had not become the presumptive Republican nominee, he planned a massive rally in Chicago that attracted thousands of supporters but was canceled at the last minute because of the high number of protesters. This March, when his presidency seemed constantly under attack, Trump held a rally in Nashville that attracted at least 2,500 protesters.

Unlike rallies in states that are solidly Republican, these events allow Trump to highlight the deep division in the country — and force voters to pick a side.

In Phoenix, campaign organizers expected more than 10,000 supporters to show up at the convention center on Tuesday night, and numerous counterprotests were planned for outside the rally. Local activists said they hoped to outnumber the rally-goers, sending a clear message to the president after the Charlottesville rally this month that attracted neo-Nazis and white supremacists.

'By coming here in a time of national crisis and a national question of where people stand, he is doubling down on his bigotry, continuing to race-bait and speak to his base,' said Carlos García, executive director of Puente Arizona, which advocates for migrants.

Read the Washington Post, Trump threatens shutdown, suggests controversial pardon at Arizona rally.

"A GOP trope that long predates the Trump administration is the desire to see the federal government run more like a business. George W. Bush was the MBA president, after all. Mitt Romney was very successful in the private sector, and during the 2012 campaign he pledged to apply lean management techniques to the federal government.

From these early tendrils, the Trump administration has let a thousand CEOs bloom. Among the more prominent private-sector folks in Trump’s Cabinet are: Goldman Sachs exec-turned Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin, financial manager-turned-Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross, and, most notably, former ExxonMobil CEO-turned mythical Secretary of State Rex Tillerson. It was not an exaggeration when Trump’s Cabinet was described as consisting of generals and plutocrats.

Nine months in, looking at Trump’s Cabinet, it is striking at how those with prior government or military service have vastly outperformed the plutocrats. Jim Mattis has received strong reviews for his performance as secretary of defense, as has Nikki Haley as U.S. ambassador to the United Nations. John F. Kelly impressed enough during his stint at Homeland Security to be made the new Prime Minister White House chief of staff. Jeff Sessions is more controversial, but no one disputes that he has been effective in pursuing his policy objectives at Justice. Slowly but steadily, H.R. McMaster is professionalizing the National Security Council staff.

The contrast with the CEO Cabinet secretaries is pretty stark. . .

Trump’s private-sector hires have performed abysmally. This does not even get into the dysfunction at the White House, in which the three leading players — Jared Kushner, Steve Bannon and Trump himself — had zero senior government experience prior to January of this year.

Mnuchin, Ross, Tillerson and even Trump had some measure of private sector success in their lives. Why have they proven to be such poor stewards of the public sector?

Maybe — and I’m just spitballing here — but maybe running the public sector well is different from running a for-profit organization."

Read the Washington Post, The one GOP myth that the Trump administration has managed to discredit.