The thing you need to remember about Donald Trump's new passion for congressional earmarks, delivered in a now-predictably bizarre aside during what was in theory a meeting about immigration policy, is that Donald Trump has no goddamn opinion whatsoever on congressional earmarks and likely does not know what they are.
“You know, our system lends itself to not getting things done,” Trump said. “And I hear so much about earmarks, the old earmark system, how there was a great friendliness when you had earmarks.”
“In the old days of earmarks,” he continued, “you can say what you want about certain presidents and others ... they went out to dinner at night, and they all got along, and they passed bills. That was an earmark system. And maybe we should think about it.”
This is for the most part gibberish, but to the extent it's not gibberish Trump appears to be equating "the old earmark system" with dinner dates and general camaraderie.
The term "earmarks" in fact refers to the old now-theoretically-banned practice of inserting specific bribes for specific districts in order to secure the vote of a specific inhabitant of Congress. For example, an "earmark" could specify that there shall be a new and glorious bridge built over a particular waterway, and that it must be built in Robert UpForReelectionNextYear's district, and it will cost a bucketful of money and be named the Robert UpForReelectionNextYear AwesomeSpan. Bob can then go to his constituents and brag about the hundreds of millions of dollars that got dumped into the district solely because of his own masterful work, and in exchange for that rather potent campaign talking point all Bob needed to do was agree to a bill that he would never have otherwise voted for because it was wasteful or stupid or both.
Whether you consider that thinly veiled corruption or merely grease for the ol' lawmaking gears depends on who you talk to, but it was restricted because it had become more famous for being the first of those things than the second.
All right, so what can we make of this new insertion into Trump's rhetoric? Nothing. Absolutely nothing, and it would be pointless to try.
Donald Trump is now infamous for repeating the rhetoric of the last person he talked to, even when the last person he talked to is, say, Democratic Senator Dianne Feinstein. All we really know from this is that in the day or so before this public meeting, somebody talked to Donald Trump about "earmarks" and how great they were. It was certainly somebody who wants the current bar on earmarks erased. It may have been a member of his staff, or a member of Congress, or it may have been (far more likely) somebody he saw on his television set.
There is no evidence Donald Trump has himself given this a squib of thought, or knows what the word means: He only knows that back in the olden days, politicians were friendlier with one another and got things done and that's because back then they had drawn marks on their ears, which was the style at the time.
What we can take away from this is that Trump knows at least one somebody who wants earmarks lifted and wants to use Trump as a pawn in that game. And that's it. It's not likely Trump follows through on this in any way, if for no other reason than it's not his to follow through on, and the odds that he'll have forgotten he said it by next week are high.
If anything, it's just more evidence of Trump not having an agenda of his own. Bringing back earmarks is not at all the same thing as draining the swamp, not by a stretch, but you can make Donald say anything you want him to say by just nudging certain television shows to talk about those things. You can't make him remember it later, but you can make him say it once or twice.