{"id":5429,"date":"2017-03-03T14:38:38","date_gmt":"2017-03-03T19:38:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/napervilledemocrats.org\/ntdo\/?p=5429"},"modified":"2017-03-03T14:38:38","modified_gmt":"2017-03-03T19:38:38","slug":"about-tuesday-nights-speech","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/napervilledemocrats.org\/ntdo\/about-tuesday-nights-speech\/","title":{"rendered":"About Tuesday Night’s Speech"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Photo Credit: Miami Herald<\/p><\/div>\n

Some folks may be swooning<\/a> over DJT’s Tuesday performance, but theater aside, it was simply what Eugene Robinson describes<\/a>\u00a0as “a greatest-hits compilation of campaign promises he has no earthly way to keep.”<\/p>\n

And of course, there was plenty of the ugliness that has been on display for the last two years, even if he spoke it in his “indoor voice.” \u00a0Jonathan Chait calls that out<\/a>:<\/p>\n

The high point of Donald Trump\u2019s presidency to date \u2014 the moment when those who desperately wanted to close their eyes and imagine a normal president standing before the country got something resembling their wish \u2014 came during his late-February speech to a joint session of Congress. Trump managed to read his address without narcissistic digressions, and the message he delivered (\u201cNationalism with an indoor voice,\u201d as one White House official put it) would have been obvious to any casual listener. Over and over, Trump blamed America\u2019s problems on foreigners or the willingness of past leaders to accommodate them…<\/p>\n

(BTW, the larger subject of Chait’s piece is Trump’s ever-deepening Russian twistedness, more about which comes out every day<\/a>.)<\/em><\/p>\n

And this, from Radley Balko at the WaPo<\/a>:<\/p>\n

That Donald Trump is getting bipartisan praise for Tuesday night\u2019s fit of demagoguery masquerading as a presidential address<\/a> is a frightening demonstration of how his first month in office has left those of who are supposed to hold him accountable timid and shell-shocked. We\u2019ve been conditioned to accept behavior from the leader of the most powerful nation on Earth that we\u2019d never have accepted from his predecessors (and I have pretty low expectations of presidents) \u2014 that we\u2019d never accept from a friend, relative, pastor or community leader \u2014 as long as he spares us and our group from his attacks.<\/p>\n

We need to be better than that.<\/p>\n

Trump\u2019s speech included plenty of lies, but they were the same lies that we\u2019re used to hearing from this president. Because there weren\u2019t any new lies, Trump gets praised. The speech was full of fact-free fear-mongering and ethnic scapegoating. But it\u2019s the same variety of fear-mongering and ethnic scapegoating we\u2019ve come to expect from this president. At least he didn\u2019t ratchet up the demagoguery. So Trump gets praised. The speech was shallow and narcissistic. But that\u2019s just who Trump is. It wasn\u2019t any more shallow or narcissistic than, say, his Twitter feed. So Trump gets praised. The alleged magnanimity in the speech for which Trump is winning plaudits wasn\u2019t just transparent and contrived; it was wholly at odds with Trump\u2019s past behavior. His very recent past behavior. As in, his behavior from just hours earlier. But the pundit class has the memory of a tsetse fly. So Trump gets praised.<\/p>\n

…<\/p>\n

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Photo Credit: CNN<\/p><\/div>\n

Yes, there were the many<\/a> lies<\/a>, which we have stopped noticing due to their constancy. \u00a0But maybe the worst of Tuesday night’s offenses was his cynical use of the wife of a slain Navy SEAL as a prop. \u00a0He seems to think that an ovation makes up for his refusal to accept any responsibility for his role in the needless loss of a brave life.<\/p>\n

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