Frank Rich: Trump's Big Speech Failed at Every Level

[babylonsister]

the national circus 1:11 P.M.
Trump’s Big Speech Failed at Every Level
By Frank Rich


In the State of the Union, Donald Trump called for unity while taking many partisan shots. How do you determine the success of a speech like Trump’s?

Even looking at the 80-minute-plus laundry list from Trump’s point of view, the speech seems to have failed at every level.

If Trump’s number-one political goal was to get his wall built, he didn’t advance the cause but signaled his surrender. His incessantly repeated pre-speech threat that he might declare a “national emergency” to circumvent Congress and get his way evaporated entirely last night. Why? He’s a paper tiger. He’d only been blustering about declaring an emergency in the first place to drum up phony suspense that might draw viewers to tune in. Even he has figured out that too many Republicans in Congress are openly opposed to that legally dubious power grab for him to try it now. Nor will the GOP happily sign on to another politically self-immolating government shutdown. So when Trump declared “I’ll get it built” last night, that can be translated to mean: “I have surrendered and will claim that whatever compromise Congress puts forth by the February 15 deadline means ‘I got my wall.’” Nancy Pelosi has won.

If Trump’s biggest personal goal was to impede what he called “ridiculous partisan investigations,” he has no more chance of accomplishing that than Richard Nixon did when he made a similar pitch in the 1974 State of the Union, seven months before Watergate drove him out of office. If anything, the investigations are metastasizing: Witness the sprawling subpoena that descended on the Trump Inaugural Committee from the Southern District of New York just as Trump was preparing to give his speech. In addition to the ever-growing body of evidence that Trump is a witting Russian agent, there are more criminal investigations of him, his business, his family, and his crime syndicate of a Cabinet than we can easily count. Let’s not forget that in the end it was simple tax evasion, not capital crimes, that brought down Al Capone.

If Trump’s stylistic goal was to somehow reset his image two years into his nasty presidency, his efforts were risible. Having purported to deliver a “message of unity” in his 2017 address to Congress, and having called for summoning “the unity we need to deliver for the people” in 2018, this time he came out for “cooperation, compromise, and the common good.” It is hard to imagine that a single American — whether Trump supporter or foe — bought this bunk any more than they buy his annual promise of an infrastructure push. His efforts to milk the touching real-life stories of the White House’s invited spectators were also disingenuous. He called for a $500 million budget over ten years to fight childhood cancers — less than 10 percent of the $5.7 billion he wants to build his wall this year. His tender words about Holocaust survivors were outrageous coming from a man who refused to condemn Charlottesville neo-Nazis chanting “Jews will not replace us” and countenanced anti-Semitic iconography exploited by his campaign.

If Trump’s rock-bottom goal was to provide television entertainment, here too he failed. The most enjoyable aspect of the entire event was watching Pelosi. Her sarcastic applause when Trump issued his bogus call for compromise – instantly christened the “fuck you” clap by Patton Oswalt – went viral. No less delightful was the sight of her repeatedly thumbing through the pages of his speech on camera as if she were looking for something more substantive, or at least more amusing, to read. It was worthy of a Tina Fey SNL bit. It was also fun to watch the expanded ranks of women in the Democratic caucus seize Trump’s phony embrace of female empowerment and throw it back at him and his party in a spontaneous eruption of joyous victory.

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[Ilsa]

1. SNL will have Speaker Pelosi solving the

World's biggest problems behind trump's back as he spews his garbage behind the podium.

[underpants]

2. 👀

Reading e

[spanone]

3. K&R...

[2naSalit]

4. K&R

[Blue Owl]

5. The Failing "SOTU Address"

n/t

[Mc Mike]

6. Even diction and pronunciation.

[NastyRiffraff]

7. I can't wait for SNL's take

Nancy stole the show. Her expressions, her pointed reading, and of course the famous clap, provided virtual fact-checking of the terribly written, even more badly delivered, speech.