Trump, on YouTube, Pledges to Create Jobs
By MICHAEL D. SHEAR and JULIE HIRSCHFELD DAVISNOVEMBER 21, 2016WASHINGTON — President-elect Donald J. Trump on Monday released a two-and-a-half-minute infomercial-style video, turning to social media to deliver a direct-to-camera message in which he vowed to create jobs, renegotiate trade agreements, end restrictions on energy production and impose bans on lobbying.Mr. Trump offered what he called an update on his transition, which he said was going “very smoothly, efficiently and effectively.” Reading from a script and looking into a camera, he steered clear of his most inflammatory campaign promises to deport immigrants and track Muslims and his pledge to repeal the Affordable Care Act.[embed]http://https://youtu.be/7xX_KaStFT8[/embed]“Whether it’s producing steel, building cars or curing disease, I want the next generation of production and innovation to happen right here, in our great homeland: America — creating wealth and jobs for American workers,” Mr. Trump said in the video. The brief YouTube video offered one of the few opportunities for the public to hear from Mr. Trump directly since he was elected two weeks ago. The president-elect has declined to hold a news conference since his victory, and instead has used early-morning Twitter bursts to communicate.
Mr. Trump gave a brief middle-of-the-night speech after Hillary Clinton called him on Nov. 9. And he sat for an interview with The Wall Street Journal and an appearance, surrounded by his family, on CBS News’s “60 Minutes” last week. Since then, he has mostly been behind closed doors as he assembles a cabinet and White House team. on Day 1, but his message seemed aimed less at the supporters who chanted that slogan at rallies and more at the Americans who remain skeptical about it.
The president-elect appeared to try to emphasize his appeal to those voters at the end of the video, and he promised to provide more updates as he worked together with everyone to reach his goals.
“And I mean everyone,” he emphasized.
The video underscored the extent to which Mr. Trump intends to try to navigate around the traditional newspaper and television media outlets as he seeks to communicate his message to the public.
Ari Fleischer, who served as White House press secretary under George W. Bush, said Mr. Trump was using technology to communicate with the public in a format that Mr. Bush’s staff would never have dreamed of doing 15 years ago, because the news media would have dismissed it as propaganda. President Obama has become adept at doing the same thing in recent years, through videos posted on Facebook and other media.
Mr. Fleischer said, “He’s just doing more of what President Obama successfully did, and what I’m fascinated about is, what does this mean for the future?” On Monday, the president-elect met privately with television executives in a confidential session that was described later as a sometimes contentious effort to clear the air after a campaign season in which Mr. Trump often clashed with members of the media.
Mr. Trump is also scheduled to meet with editors and reporters at The New York Times on Tuesday.
But his decision to deliver a highly scripted video message suggests that he, like Mr. Obama, is eager to embrace new media opportunities. By Monday, Mr. Trump’s @RealDonaldTrump Twitter account, which he enjoys using, had 15.7 million followers. Once in the White House, he will inherit @POTUS, with its 12.1 million online followers.
Mr. Trump also spent Monday at his office in Trump Tower, interviewing a stream of potential Republican cabinet candidates. They included Rick Perry, a former governor of Texas; former Senator Scott Brown of Massachusetts; and Representative Tulsi Gabbard of Hawaii, a Democrat.
Perhaps the most interesting thing about Mr. Trump’s video was what he did not say in it.
On immigration, he avoided any mention of his plan to build a wall along the border with Mexico or his desire to deport immigrants here illegally, whether or not they have a criminal record. He made no mention of ending President Obama’s program that grants work permits to immigrants who were brought illegally to the United States as children.
Instead, Mr. Trump simply promised to direct the Labor Department to investigate visa abuses.
The tough-talking president-elect, who has often railed against Mr. Obama and “the generals” for what he often called their “stupid” conduct of foreign policy, said nothing in the video about fighting terrorism, confronting Russian aggression or pressuring NATO allies to pay more for their common defense.
Instead, he said he would ask his top military officials for a comprehensive plan to guard America’s vital infrastructure from “cyberattacks, and all other form of attacks.”
Mr. Trump’s other promises in the video recapped points that he made repeatedly during the campaign, offering a series of executive actions that he says he will order on his first full day in the Oval Office. Some, like his pledge to “issue our notification of intent to withdraw from the trans-Pacific Partnership” trade deal, will be well within his power as president to accomplish. But his additional promise to “negotiate fair, bilateral trade deals that bring jobs and industry back onto American shores” will be in the eyes of the beholder, and may not produce the results he expects.
Others appear to be overblown political hyperbole, like his promise in the video to “cancel job-killing restrictions on the production of American energy — including shale energy and clean coal — creating many millions of high-paying jobs.”
He did not specify in the short video what restrictions he will lift or how that would result in “many millions” of jobs. Even supporters of theKeystone XL oil pipeline, which Mr. Trump has said he will greenlight once in office, do not believe it would create millions of jobs if it was built.
Mr. Fleischer said Mr. Trump’s more inclusive tone in the video was the latest example of a pattern he set during the campaign of dialing back his impulse for fiery speech when he felt it was in his interest.
“He has said this about himself, that he knows how to be really boring when he wants to be,” Mr. Fleischer said of Mr. Trump. “He’s so self-aware about the fact that there are these two Trumps, and we’re seeing more of the other one since he won.”