The Man Who Snuffed Out Abortion Rights Is Here to Tell You He Is a Moderate

Donald Trump does not speak from conviction. He does not speak from belief or at least any belief other than self-obsession. He certainly does not speak from anything we might recognize as reason; when he’s holding forth at a microphone, even the most careful students of Trump the rhetorician will struggle to find the light of complex thought.

You should think of Trump instead as a purely instrumental speaker. It does not matter to him whether a statement is true or false. It does not matter if one statement contradicts another in the same speech or in the same paragraph or in the same sentence. What matters to Trump is whether the words serve the purpose at hand. He will say anything if it’s what he feels an audience wants to hear or if it moves him one step closer to a personal or political goal.