The master manipulator was at it again.
Much has been written on the President’s speech to a joint session of Congress last Tuesday evening. As with presidents past, the hour-long affair was filled with grand pronouncements, sweeping statements, and professions that would bring a tear to any patriot’s eye. Even Benedict Arnold might take a moment to reach for a Kleenex. The media—in all its supposed “fake” glory—was there to report every second of it. Every new president steps up to the podium to deliver the same address that gets broadcast throughout the nation. How fortuitous for the TV president, and perfect timing too after weeks of one debacle after another. Where would he find himself without the media he loves to loathe?
Did Trump sound in his speech like the president that so many—even his biggest supporters—are waiting for him to morph into? He did. For once, there were at least talking points to hang on to, albeit very few, and the shred of an agenda. And I don’t doubt that much of what was in his speech—from the desire to clean up cities to creating jobs—is his intent. After all, it’s what he ran on and what he has promised. He was smart enough to have kicked it off with noting the conclusion of Black History Month and to the work that still need be done to heal racial divides, and professing to be there to deliver a message of unity and strength. Being a true-blue American, Trump seems bent on fulfilling his call to nationalism. Far be it from me to cast doubt on the abilities of a man who got to Pennsylvania Avenue—through building a hotel—before he moved onto Pennsylvania Avenue. Orchestration is one of his biggest, and most utilized, strengths.
A CNN/ORC poll last week reported that 7 out of 10 people feel that the speech Trump delivered was what they wanted to hear, primarily because his proposed policies would move the country in the right direction, and that two-thirds said the president has the right priorities. Sean Hannity at Fox News said the president has “the wind at his back” and applauded the fact that Trump is moving down his checklist, checking things off. But in a March 1 interview on MSNBC, David Stockman, the former director of the Office of Management and Budget under Ronald Reagan, called the speech the most fiscally irresponsible one given by a president to Congress since LBJ’s speech on guns and butter—in other words, overblown. Stockman said that despite the $20 trillion dollar debt that Trump must now deal with, he’s promising to rebuild our defense, increase support for veterans, and provide massive tax cuts for the middle class, all at the same time. Trump has once again played to the base, painting a picture of the shining City upon a hill—a phrase initially coined by Jesus in his Sermon on the Mount, not by Ronald Reagan, and further popularized by John Winthrop, Puritan lawyer and second (and three times after that) governor of Massachusetts. Trump crafted a near Utopia where “Dying industries will come roaring back to life” and “Crumbling infrastructure will be replaced with new roads, bridges, tunnels, airports and railways gleaming across our very, very beautiful land.” Visions of the silvery Jetsons wonderworld come to mind. Stockman reminded viewers that the net U.S. debt has gone up $187 billion in Trump’s first 35 days in office, despite the fact that Trump tweeted that the debt had been reduced by $12 billion since he has taken office. While Trump was going down his checklist, has he bothered to check the fiscal checkbook as well?
The speech was clearly crafted for the occasion, no doubt more by the trusty Stephen Miller and cohorts than Trump himself, and read off a teleprompter to repeated shouts of “Hurrah!” from right-wing lapdogs. Trump realizes that there are times when he must have words prepared, especially in order to sustain a very official, very televised full hour of talk. His approval ratings in his first month have already sunk lower than any new president’s before him. Blowing this by speaking in his customary off-the-cuff manner could only shoot them down further. But one speech does not a president make, and teleprompter or no, Trump again utilized his favorite trick, that of speaking in largesse and scaring the American people into what they suspect may already be at work: that it’s not them, it’s the other; that their current lackluster state isn’t caused by the multitudinous factors of a company’s bottom line, one’s personal decisions, kids, college, and the progression of life and all it entails, it’s actually the big bad government who’s been at work without your input, and the big bad companies who have shipped your jobs off to foreign lands.
Trump’s speech quickly rambled from its soaring platitudes to the fear mongering he’s so good at. Talk of the sparkling, newly rebuilt nation lapsed into talk then of job creation from some of the country’s biggest employers, and even to his own talent at retention. (“I will bring back millions of jobs.”) He claimed that since he took office, Ford, Fiat Chrysler, GM, Sprint, Softbank, Lockheed Martin, Intel, and Walmart have all of a sudden decided that the U.S. is a better place to carry out parts of planned business than a country where goods can be produced at a fraction of the cost. That they will invest billions and billions of dollars here at home sounds nice, never mind that the hundreds of millions of dollars on the production of the F35 jet fighter that Trump lays claim to having saved had been in the works for months and was a subject he hotly criticized the manufacturer of that plane for—Lockheed Martin—over the past few months as well. His speechwriter knows the art of the segue—the bridging of one thought and one sentence to another to make for smooth prose and a convincing argument. Once Trump captured the attention of his audience with the jobs card, arguably the most important issue for most, he moved on to one passage after another about preserving our American way of life—about keeping our borders safe and keeping the bad guys out—with statements like, “As we speak, we are removing gang members, drug dealers, and criminals that threaten our communities and pray on our citizens.” The phrase “our citizens” surfaced again as he reported on directing the DOJ on a new task force that will reduce violent crime, and then ordering three other major departments along with the new director of national intelligence to dismantle the criminal cartels that have spread across our nation. The bad guys are out there, everywhere. But don’t worry, we’re taking care of it. It’s almost like Trump is promising that by the time we wake up in the morning, they’ll all be gone. He knows how to play to his audience, but I don’t buy it.
Trump’s America is one where 94 million people are out of the labor force (not true, as laid out by Business Insider, who reiterates that the Bureau of Labor Statistics counts anyone over 16 years old as part of that labor force—thus kids in high school and college and all retirees who wouldn’t be working anyway are part of Trump’s 94 million; the real number should be drawn from the Prime Age Employment to Population ratio, which examines only those from age 25 to 54, a rate that’s lower than it was before the recession but recovering faster than the former); that 1 in 5 people in prime working years are not working (again, not true, citing the Prime Age Employment to Population ratio, and an unemployment rate in that bracket of only 4.1 percent); that 43 million Americans are on food stamps (this number has been trending downward over the past several years, according to a February 28 Washington Post article—and as an addendum, the aid is used across the socioeconomic spectrum: the latest data in 2013 from the government’s Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, shows it to be 40.2 percent of whites; 25.7 of blacks; 10.3 Hispanic; 2.1 percent Asian; and 1.2 percent are Native American. A fellow journalist I know—a white girl from a nice family—resorted to food stamps a few years back as a result of a few months of unemploy. People go through difficult times.); that we’re in the middle of the worst financial recovery in 65 years (very not true, as reported in last Wednesday’s long article on FactCheck.org that cited a years-long trend in national job growth and 2.2 million jobs that were added in the 12 months before Trump took office—and 76 straight months of gains, the longest ever); that NAFTA has caused us to lose one quarter of our manufacturing jobs since it was approved. (NAFTA was initiated by George H.W. Bush, put in place by President Clinton, received widespread bipartisan support, and was designed to increase trade between the U.S., Canada, and Mexico eliminating most tariffs on goods. Although much debated, and the trade deficit has indeed increased since its implementation in 1994, a 2014 Peterson Institute study cited by the Council on Foreign Relations found that for each job added each year, the economy gains roughly $450,000 in higher productivity and lower consumer prices.)
The new president says he wants all Americans to succeed, especially the shrinking middle class and those in the inner cities, like Chicago, Baltimore, Detroit, his favored triumvirate when it comes to the picture of poverty. Those who love Trump will see his swooping phraseology as prophetic—that, “True love for our people requires us to find common ground,” and even the more fervent, “For the bible teaches us that there is no greater act of love than to lay down one’s life for one’s country,” words he uttered to Carryn Owens, widow of slain Navy SEAL Ryan Owens, whom he invited to the joint session that night to further avoid focus on the raid in Yemen, not perhaps as a tribute to her holding fast and his brave courage. Painting our citizenry as helpless against all the bad dark-skinned people out there and igniting a highly sympathetic moment to deter us from the real facts is Trump’s strong suit. Papa Bear Trump alone seems always to want to fix it all.
Trump proclaimed that what we are witnessing is the renewal of the American spirit. In my mind, American spirit is alive and well and thriving. The unemployment rate was 4.9 percent in October of last year, further dropping to 4.6 percent in November, which it is now, all a result of the efforts of the previous administration. Companies like Whole Foods, Lyft, Google, and Zillo have displayed an exercise of ingenuity by a new generation of business pioneers who have created dramatic and sweeping changes to how we carry out everyday tasks, and created many jobs at all levels in the process. Social service agencies and institutions like AmeriCorps, Head Start, Focus: HOPE, the local YMCA, and yes, Planned Parenthood, keep so many of our fellow citizens surviving and deliver vital necessities—like basic medical care and food. Many of these programs are now under threat of being disposed of with the new administration’s budget cuts.
Certain pundits suggested after Trump spoke that he may actually be conducting himself presidentially now, taking to the more methodical behavior one expects of a statesman, and of the holder of the highest office in the land. The past few days though, with its renewed travel ban, outrageous tweets and absurd accusations, have quickly extinguished that flicker of appropriateness. How quickly we forget too about Trump’s ridiculous behavior over the nearly two years of his political involvement, how he stomped on everyone who got in his way, insulting John McCain, a war hero like no other, Jeb Bush’s “mommy” for coming to hear him speak, and a judge who he absurdly claimed may have let his Latin roots intercede on his better judgement. He has the audacity to claim every media outlet except very few report fake news in an effort to steer attention away from the growing call for investigation into his affairs with Russia, and points the finger at the previous administration to cause yet another stir, claiming they bugged his building. How easily we can gloss over watching the leader of our nation belittle a room full of hard-working journalists who are there to serve the American people just as much as he is. The TV president is courting the camera again, and we all sit back and watch. How quickly we forget what has happened to societies where equally categorical and narrow-minded leadership has taken hold. How quickly we forget that 6 million of those others who were not like us were put to death by another guy who promised to put people back to work and rebuild their cities. How quickly we forget that if we fail to learn from history, we are doomed to repeat it.
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