'Lipstick on a pig': Behind Trump's bombastic claims lies a trail of failed initiatives

Long before he first ran for president in 2000 or became a reality television star with "The Apprentice" during the George W. Bush years, Donald Trump was known for his flashy, highly performative approach in the real estate world. Trump's properties prioritized overstatement, from Trump Tower in Mid-Town Manhattan to his hotels and casinos in Atlantic City.

According to the New York Times' Frank Bruni, Trump's flashiness carries over to politics. Trump, Bruni argues, is an example of style over substance — but short on results.

"Never have I witnessed a White House so devoted to surfaces," Bruni observes in the Times. "Surfaces caked with makeup. Surfaces puffed up with hair spray. Surfaces glossed with gold. Surfaces that glitter blue — or someday might, if the over-budget overhaul of the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool ever works out as promised. Appearances simultaneously obscure reality and substitute for it. Your sheen is your success, and you are what you impersonate."

Bruni points to Trump's nomination of Kevin Warsh for U.S. Federal Reserve secretary as a prime example of his over-the-top approach.

"Sure, Warsh has an impressive résumé, and he has signaled obeisance to a president who demands such submission," Bruni explains. "But he has an additional asset. 'On top of everything else, he is central casting,' Trump wrote in the late January social media post that announced Warsh's selection. According to an article by Eva Roytburg in Fortune magazine at that time, Trump once told Warsh, during a 2019 meeting in the White House, 'You're a really handsome guy.'"

Bruni continues, "To Trump, that's an important credential. All the world's a television show, 'central casting' is a recurring compliment, and handsomeness or beauty establishes a kind of superiority — which in turn bequeaths confidence, which then begets dominance. By his zoology, an aviary of peacocks equals a menagerie of lions."

The Times columnist cites Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., and former Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem as prime examples of Trump officials favoring style over substance.

"Liberation Day was the semantic lipstick on that pig," Bruni laments. "The war with Iran is Operation Epic Fury, and it has demonstrated anew that the Trump Administration's initiatives are lavishly marketed rather than carefully conceived. Assessments of the war’s progress change daily, even hourly, and repeatedly turn out to be unreliable, because they're often just phrases put through the language equivalent of tanning beds to be given a glow and bronzed just so. That's what's important. Not the cancer growing beneath."

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