Among the critics who posted on X Sunday after my Fox News show was one who made an argument that surprised me.
Don’t pay attention to what President Trump says, this person wrote. Pay attention to what he does.
Now that’s a novel idea. What the President of the United States says is unimportant and should be ignored. I doubt that this person applied the same standard to President Joe Biden.
And yet there’s an interesting thought exercise here. Trump says a lot of things, especially since he talks to journalists at length virtually every day. Not everything rises to the same level of seriousness. I say this as someone who has interviewed him many times over the years, including our sitdown two weeks before the election.
Sometimes the president says things just to rile up the press. Sometimes he says things that aren’t true, or are exaggerations or taken out of context.
But more often he says the quiet part out loud, signaling what he plans to do or insulting those with whom he disagrees, the kind of stuff that reporters used to have to attribute to unnamed aides, and he does it in front of the cameras.
At the top of the list right now would be Ukraine. Donald Trump is a smart guy, he knows that Russia invaded its much smaller sovereign neighbor with the aim of wiping it off the map and putting it under Moscow’s control. But he has chosen to blame Ukraine for starting the war, and to insult Volodomyr Zelenskyy as a dictator when everyone knows that label perfectly describes Vladimir Putin.
The most charitable interpretation is that Trump believes the only way to end the war is through an alliance with Putin for a settlement that could then be sold to Ukraine. (The United States voted with Russia yesterday against a U.N. resolution condemning the invasion.)
Of course, Trump has cozied up to Putin for a long time. During their Helsinki summit in the first term, the president accepted Putin’s denial that the Kremlin had hacked into Democratic emails, despite the evidence gathered by his own intelligence agencies.
Trump has repeated again and again that Zelenskyy bears responsibility for the war that just marked its three-year anniversary. Is this aimed at the American public or at Moscow or Kyiv (to put pressure on Ukraine)?
Journalists keep asking Trump aides and Republican supporters if they agree with the president’s blame-Ukraine approach, and many have simply tried to deflect the question.
In my ‘Media Buzz’ interview with Jason Miller, the longtime Trump confidante and senior adviser to the Trump transition team, he deftly avoided contradicting the president.
‘What President Trump has done,’ he said, ‘is he has forced the sides to the table to actually stop the killing and come up with a peace deal. For the last several years. Joe Biden has sat there completely incompetent, doing nothing but fueling and funding more killing and more death.’
When I tried again, Miller said of his boss that ‘his legacy really will be as a peacemaker.’
I came back a third time, quoting conservative radio host Mark Levin as saying, ‘This is sick. Ukraine didn’t start this war. What were they supposed to do? Roll over and play dead? They’re just trying to survive.’
And I asked: ‘Why is President Trump blaming Zelenskyy for the beginning of the war?’
‘Well, Zelenskyy has a lot of blame. I think that would go to this as well. But again, you want to look into the past, I want to look into the future, what we do to save lives.’
Jason Miller was doing his job. A similar scenario played out on the other Sunday shows.
On ‘Fox News Sunday,’ my colleague Shannon Bream asked Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth whether it was fair to say that Russia was unprovoked when it attacked Ukraine. He replied that it was ‘fair to say it’s a very complicated situation.’
Stressing that Trump wants to end the war, Hegseth said: ‘‘You’re good, you’re bad; you’re a dictator, you’re not a dictator; you invaded, you didn’t.’ It’s not useful. It’s not productive.’
Another part of my Sunday interview also shed light on Trump’s use of language.
The president had told reporters: ‘I think we should govern the District of Columbia, make it absolutely flawlessly beautiful.’
The District has enjoyed home rule for 50 years, although Congress retains the power to overturn its laws. The capital, like most cities, grapples with crime, poverty and other urban ills.
I asked point blank: Is the president ready to end home rule in D.C.?
Miller said Mayor Muriel Bowser is largely doing a good job, adding: ‘I think part of the reason why President Trump won is because he said he was going to clean up our cities to make them safe. Of course he’s going to put pressure on the District of Columbia.’
So Trump’s words in this instance had a different meaning, as a warning signal to the District.
Oh, I also wondered why Trump keeps referring to Canada as the 51st state when that’s not going to happen.
‘The president’s having a little bit of fun with it. But he’s also making some very serious points.’
My online detractor was wrong. It’s important to pay attention to the president’s words, especially for the media, which have a tendency to overreact to some of his language. The challenge is deciphering when he’s dead serious, when he’s sending signals, and when he’s just trolling.