Last night, I did something I almost never do now, to protect my sanity and psychological equilibrium: I actually watched President Donald Trump speak.
Notwithstanding my recent forbearance, I, as you, have seen him speak many times. Many times, I have been infuriated. Many times, I have been terrified. Many times, I have been both.
Last night was different.
As a political junkie, I have been watching Presidents speak for over 60 years. Some have been soaring orators; others, not so much. I have always rated Mr. Trump a compelling if offensive speaker. Even so, his speech last night was, without doubt, the worst Presidential Address I have ever seen. He was the quintessential crazy geezer spouting nonsense as everyone tries to edge away. (I get it; at least you didn’t have to tell me; but I’m not president. 😉) It was … awful.
His “I’m the best, Biden’s the worst, everything I’ve done is good, everything Biden and the radical left has done is bad, this is the greatest anyone has ever seen, this was the worst anyone has ever seen, nobody could believe how great I’ve done” schtick has, until now, been wildly annoying fabrication; this time, it seemed a pathetic careen between delusion and desperation.
I’m the only one either of us know who is enough of an idiot to admit that recently something I said has come back and resonated with me 😉, but it did. In a post about a month ago speculating on Mr. Trump’s ultimate intentions for his Administration, I indicated, “His 2024 campaign was about avoiding jail, making money, and retribution.” The significance of that observation, if true, didn’t strike me until later. All his 2024 campaign may have been about for him was avoiding jail, making money, and retribution. Winning was the thing – his goal would be accomplished the day he won — not governing. While winning undoubtedly is the primary thing – and worrying secondarily about what they’re going to do if they win – is probably true for all major party presidential candidates, I would suggest that for Mr. Trump, winning was the only thing. Granting that he has genuine feelings about a few policy issues – he hates immigrants of color, and loves tariffs, tax cuts, and low interest rates – inflation (now “affordability,” the new buzz word) – the key concern for the decisive segment of voters that put him over the top in 2024 — was just a talking point to him, and he neither knows nor cares what to do about it. Anyone who takes a high school economics class will tell you that tariffs and lower interest rates spur inflation, not squash it, and if our experience through Presidents Ronald Reagan, George W. Bush and Mr. Trump has proven anything, it’s that cutting tax rates the way they did helps the rich a lot, while the relative pennies that trickle to those of lesser means haven’t come close to counteracting the crippling economic disparity we have seen rise among our people over the last 45 years. When Mr. Trump won, those who voted for him for help on economic issues expected him to help them. For him, when he won, he was done.
An aside, regarding Mr. Trump’s announcement of a $1776 “Warrior Dividend” for, in the President’s words, “every soldier.” In the short time before I turned the TV off, I saw one liberal pundit applaud the move. On a substantive basis, I absolutely support the initiative. (An aside within an aside, from anyone who has taken a sixth grade civics class: “Doesn’t Congress have to approve this ‘Warrior Dividend?’ Answer: Yes; but will any politician from either party running for reelection vote against it? You take that one.) That said, Mr. Trump does nothing that he doesn’t think will benefit him. What I see is White House unease that given the wildly misguided, condescending session Mr. Trump and his moronic Secretary of Defense, Pete Hegseth, recently had with our military’s top officers, and the Administration’s blowing up tiny boats in international waters that many military legal experts have called war crimes – potentially wantonly exposing soldiers who follow those and like orders to later prosecution – the military no longer trusts its the Commander-in-Chief and will not necessarily follow him down questionable paths. He’s trying to buy back its loyalty.
I expected to end last evening infuriated or terrified, perhaps both. There were instead instances at which I laughed out loud at the patent buffoonery, the rapid-fire, scatter-shot, oblivious carnival barker delivery. Not in any way discounting the fact that he remains the most powerful human on earth, or that he has and certainly will continue to try to subvert our democracy for his own gain, I was saddened for those financially stressed Americans who placed their faith in him. For him, I was actually … embarrassed.
McCoy's Noise 