April 12, 2025
The Bodycam Presidency
By Tim O'Brien
Michigan governor and would-be 2028 presidential hopeful Gretchen Whitmer angered fellow Democrats on April 9th when she travelled to the White House as scheduled to meet privately with President Trump. The presumptive purpose for the meeting was to discuss tariffs and other Michigan-related matters.
That’s not how it turned out, however. It wasn’t a private meeting at all. Instead, Whitmer was forced to the periphery of the Oval Office as the president signed executive orders and presided over one of his now routine media scrums. While he did squeeze in some conversation in with Whitmer, along with some gracious praise of her, you don’t have to be a body language expert to sense her obvious discomfort with the whole situation. She knew how this sort of impromptu photo op would play to her base.
In his first term, President Trump might have invited someone like Whitmer to his office and actually had that private meeting, allowing her to leave and later reframe her own version of it all for the media, setting the narrative regardless of Trump’s version of events.
If nothing else, Trump has proven to be a quick study. Since 2016, he has gone from novice outsider to one of the most skilled politicians America has seen in a very long time. So much so, that he’s playing the game at a level no one has imagined.
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https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2025/04/the_bodycam_presidency.html
