Donald Trump loves his Twitter. Everybody knows that. He’s been adamantly tweeting his gut reactions, 140 frantic characters at a time. But with his first 100 days quickly winding down, our Twitter-happy president is suddenly finding refuge — on Facebook this time.
It’s complicated is Trump’s new go-to phrase.
That purposely opaque formulation has been employed by millions of Facebook users who want to duck the profile question: “Relationship status?” Instead of “married” or “single” or “in a relationship,” they chose the classic two-word dodge: “It’s complicated.”
Well, check this out: From China to Obamacare, from Vladimir Putin to Kim Jong-un, our cocksure president is dishing up that very same Facebook obfuscation: It’s complicated…far more complicated than I imagined…more complicated than anybody knew.
North Korea’s nuclear threat? “After listening for 10 minutes” to Chinese president Xi Jinping, Trump told the Wall Street Journal, “I realized it’s not so easy. I felt pretty strongly that they had a tremendous power over North Korea. But it’s not what you would think.”
None of this is easy, he complained. “The magnitude of everything is so big, and also the decisions are so big, you know, you’re talking about life and death.”
And this comes as a major surprise?
We got our first glimpse of “it’s complicated” as Trump was struggling to repeal and replace Obamacare, which he’d promised to do on Day One. “Now, I have to tell you, it’s an unbelievably complex subject,” he told the nation’s governors at the White House. “Nobody knew health care could be so complicated.”
Actually, lots of people knew. Hillary Clinton. Barack Obama. Pretty much anyone who’d ever taken a breath in Washington over the past two decades. But it’s not just health care. Lots of things are complicated down there. Immigration policy. The Middle East. Terrorism. Nuclear proliferation. The march of technology. The decline in manufacturing. The role of China in our economy. The squeeze on working-class jobs. Tax policy. Social issues. Paying for stuff. You name it. It’s all complicated.
If these problems were easy, don’t you think they’d have all been solved years ago?
Metro columnist Ellis Henican is a veteran journalist, bestselling author and frequent commentator on CNN and other TV networks. Follow him on Twitter @henican.
