President Donald Trump’s first nine months in office have been unconventional in every sense, according to Bangor native William Cohen, a Republican who served more than two decades in Congress before becoming Democratic President Bill Clinton’s secretary of defense.
From the way the president treats members of Congress to his fondness for “tweetstorms,” and his taunting of everyone from the National Football League to North Korea, Cohen said, “President Trump has really rejected the norms in virtually every aspect of his presidency.”
The current “unconventional” administration was the topic of this year’s Cohen Lecture at the University of Maine, presented by the William S. Cohen Institute for Leadership and Public Service at the Collins Center for the Arts. Cohen was joined Friday by Andrew H. Card Jr., former chief of staff to President George W. Bush, and Ambassador Marc Grossman, former undersecretary of state for political affairs.
