Opinion

Sorry, Mr. Trump, But Presidents Apologize

Getty Images

David Benkof Contributor
Font Size:

Donald Trump’s trademark allergy to apologies will hamstring America if he can’t learn to at least feign regret when the job requires it. Sometimes, American presidents must apologize on behalf of the nation (to defuse international tensions), the administration (to recover from unpopular policies), and himself (to regain the public’s trust).

It’s part of the job description. Every president does it.

Apologies, for example, rebuild relationships with alienated leaders of allied nations, such as when President Obama apologized to Angela Merkel for the National Security Agency’s bugging of her phone and President Reagan’s told Margaret Thatcher he regretted excluding her in planning the US invasion of Granada.

Almost like clockwork, foreign policy emergencies arise which only “I’m sorry” can cure. The fury of Muslim nations at soldiers destroying Korans in 2008 and 2012 was swiftly mollified when Presidents Bush and Obama apologized. When American sailors accidentally filed missiles at a Turkish destroyer, the first president Bush apologized, and when a U.S. submarine sank a Japanese fishing boat, the second president Bush did the same. To reassure Chinese leaders that NATO’s bombing of their embassy in Belgrade was a mistake, Clinton apologized five times – five times!

Every president faces at least one major scandal or humiliation, and apologies have always been an essential element of recovery – whether it’s President Jimmy Carter’s botched mission to rescue the hostages in Iran, Reagan’s role in the Iran-Contra Scandal, George H.W. Bush’s broken pledge not to raise taxes, Clinton’s lies about his affair with Monica Lewinsky, George W. Bush’s inadequate response to Hurricane Katrina, or Obama’s lie that “If you like your health care plan, you can keep it.”

And sometimes American presidents repent for America’s sins by offering regrets to people our nation has hurt. Examples include Reagan’s apologies for World War Two-era Japanese internment camps and Clinton’s for the Tuskegee experiments and American inaction in Rwanda.

Those apologies didn’t enfeeble Reagan or Clinton; they looked strong and compassionate. Here’s Reagan to Japanese-Americans: “No payment can make up for those lost years. So, what is important in this bill has less to do with property than with honor, for here we admit a wrong; here we reaffirm our commitment as a nation to equal justice under the law.”

Imagine if Trump were president when Congress passed its Japanese-American reparations bill. I believe he’d refuse to apologize to the families we interned in failing to heed our nation’s founding values. Because Trump sees an apology as a sign of weakness, something that makes a person – his favorite epithet – a “loser.”

In the course of a controversy-laden campaign, Trump apologized only three times. The first was regarding nothing specific.

“Sometimes, in the heat of debate and speaking on a multitude of issues, you don’t choose the right words or you say the wrong thing. I have done that. And believe it or not, I regret it. And I do regret it, particularly where it may have caused personal pain.”

The second and third times came after his taped remarks about mistreating women became public. His first terse apology was “if anyone was offended,” and his second offered 44 words of regret: “I’ve said and done things I regret, and the words released today on this more than a decade-old video are one of them. Anyone who knows me knows these words don’t reflect who I am. I said it, I was wrong, and I apologize.” Both statements were accompanied by a reminder that the Clintons, in Trump’s opinion, have behaved worse.

And there you have it – every word of apology offered in more than 16 months of a campaign in which the a candidate promiscuously insulted dozens of otherwise sympathetic people and groups, such as POWs, a Mexican judge, a disabled reporter, a female journalist, the family of an American hero, and the Pope.

A largely overlooked hiccup in the third debate crystallizes Trump’s stance on apologies. Trump said:

Justice (Ruth Bader) Ginsburg made some very, very inappropriate statements toward me and toward a tremendous number of people, many, many millions of people that I represent. And she was forced to apologize. And apologize she did. But these were statements that should never, ever have been made.

According to civilized society’s consensus script for apologies, that’s the moment when Trump was supposed to say “And I accept her apology.”

Why didn’t he?

Because Trump sees an apology as a sign of weakness, and he prefers his antagonists weak. He passed on a healing opportunity, though given a Supreme Court justice’s power, a normal politician would rush to soothe tensions. But Trump’s Manichaean Weltanschauung has been rewarded by his followers and enabled by sheep-like national Republicans acting against their better judgment. It’s going to get worse, not better.

Sorry.

David Benkof is Senior Political Analyst for the Daily Caller. Follow him on Twitter (@DavidBenkof) or E-mail him at DavidBenkof@gmail.com.

PREMIUM ARTICLE: Subscribe To Keep Reading

Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!

Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!
Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!

Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!
Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!

Sign Up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!
Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!
Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!
BENEFITS READERS PASS PATRIOTS FOUNDERS
Daily and Breaking Newsletters
Daily Caller Shows
Ad Free Experience
Exclusive Articles
Custom Newsletters
Editor Daily Rundown
Behind The Scenes Coverage
Award Winning Documentaries
Patriot War Room
Patriot Live Chat
Exclusive Events
Gold Membership Card
Tucker Mug

What does Founders Club include?

Tucker Mug and Membership Card
Founders

Readers,

Instead of sucking up to the political and corporate powers that dominate America, The Daily Caller is fighting for you — our readers. We humbly ask you to consider joining us in this fight.

Now that millions of readers are rejecting the increasingly biased and even corrupt corporate media and joining us daily, there are powerful forces lined up to stop us: the old guard of the news media hopes to marginalize us; the big corporate ad agencies want to deprive us of revenue and put us out of business; senators threaten to have our reporters arrested for asking simple questions; the big tech platforms want to limit our ability to communicate with you; and the political party establishments feel threatened by our independence.

We don't complain -- we can't stand complainers -- but we do call it how we see it. We have a fight on our hands, and it's intense. We need your help to smash through the big tech, big media and big government blockade.

We're the insurgent outsiders for a reason: our deep-dive investigations hold the powerful to account. Our original videos undermine their narratives on a daily basis. Even our insistence on having fun infuriates them -- because we won’t bend the knee to political correctness.

One reason we stand apart is because we are not afraid to say we love America. We love her with every fiber of our being, and we think she's worth saving from today’s craziness.

Help us save her.

A second reason we stand out is the sheer number of honest responsible reporters we have helped train. We have trained so many solid reporters that they now hold prominent positions at publications across the political spectrum. Hear a rare reasonable voice at a place like CNN? There’s a good chance they were trained at Daily Caller. Same goes for the numerous Daily Caller alumni dominating the news coverage at outlets such as Fox News, Newsmax, Daily Wire and many others.

Simply put, America needs solid reporters fighting to tell the truth or we will never have honest elections or a fair system. We are working tirelessly to make that happen and we are making a difference.

Since 2010, The Daily Caller has grown immensely. We're in the halls of Congress. We're in the Oval Office. And we're in up to 20 million homes every single month. That's 20 million Americans like you who are impossible to ignore.

We can overcome the forces lined up against all of us. This is an important mission but we can’t do it unless you — the everyday Americans forgotten by the establishment — have our back.

Please consider becoming a Daily Caller Patriot today, and help us keep doing work that holds politicians, corporations and other leaders accountable. Help us thumb our noses at political correctness. Help us train a new generation of news reporters who will actually tell the truth. And help us remind Americans everywhere that there are millions of us who remain clear-eyed about our country's greatness.

In return for membership, Daily Caller Patriots will be able to read The Daily Caller without any of the ads that we have long used to support our mission. We know the ads drive you crazy. They drive us crazy too. But we need revenue to keep the fight going. If you join us, we will cut out the ads for you and put every Lincoln-headed cent we earn into amplifying our voice, training even more solid reporters, and giving you the ad-free experience and lightning fast website you deserve.

Patriots will also be eligible for Patriots Only content, newsletters, chats and live events with our reporters and editors. It's simple: welcome us into your lives, and we'll welcome you into ours.

We can save America together.

Become a Daily Caller Patriot today.

Signature

Neil Patel