It’s up against some stiff competition, but there’s a runaway front-runner in the “wrongest idea of 2016” derby. It’s the aphorism, once fashionable on the morning-talk show circuit, that the media mistakenly took Donald Trump “literally but not seriously,” when they should have taken him “seriously but not literally,” as Trump’s supporters did.
If the idea is that the media should have taken Trump more seriously, then I’d emphatically agree. But it turns out that they probably ought to have taken him literally too. …
There’s been no “pivot,” and there have been no half-measures. Trump is doing pretty much what he said he’d do. Literally.
Why, then, does Trump’s first week and a half in office seem so surprising, even to those of us who weren’t expecting a kindler, gentler Trump? CONT.
Nate Silver, FiveThirtyEight