In a spectacular display of gaslighting Trump’s just spent about 5 minutes insisting a drug dealer kills at least 5000 people in their lives and must be killed themselves.
In fact it was so crazy I started typing this immediately. We’re seeing a new low in style and delivery from trump. It’s all stuff we’ve seen before but perhaps more vitriolic than ever, unbelievably.
The speech was a disjointed mess as usual. I’ll try to keep like ideas together. Of course his delivery meandered as always. It seemed off the cuff as usual too. The idea Trump freestyling without a qualified staff was on full display.
The drug dealer comments came after a long screed about the Wall that’s never getting built and impromptu imitations of other world leaders. He pulled out his applause line about the fantasy Mexico will pay fo the Wall for a couple of preposterous stories.
Trump also found time to make some pejorative racial cracks about Elizabeth Warren before lacing into repeated long stories about ICE and MS-13. It was pretty hard to figure out if the crowd was chanting ‘Build that Wall” or “Kill Them All”. I guess he’s lucky theres so few Native Americans in general, but its safe to say “racist against Native Americans” describes his comments best.
Later Trump helicoptered back to MS-13 yet again and compared the ICE raids on Long Island to the liberation of a city during war-time, a total misrepresentation. Then he scapegoated immigrants again as he called for penalties for sanctuary cities. Then on to chain migration and that Visa Lottery he hates for no apparent reason.
Then he praised the ICE agents as mean brutes, which is the way Trump wants all law enforcement to act (except Mueller, of course). All remarks on criminal justice revolved around the death penalty and 19th Century Opium War analogies which also were about the death penalty. He held up Singapore and China as paragons of justice.
As usual his overall tone could be called “Un-American”.
He didn’t seem scripted at all tonight. Maybe all the staff defections prevented anyone from putting together any kind of speech. It was just boasting and vitriol.
It was disturbing to have him use imprisonment, the death penalty and nuclear war as punch lines. Whatever.
The unbroken boiler plate technique of never reaching out to the other side endured. In a particularly unhinged moment he bought up Rep Maxine Waters just to bash her intelligence. He also found time to talk about some sort of Secret Weakness of Oprah’s as he wished she’d run for president. Personally if another TV personality gets close to being the president its off to Canada for me. The point is Trump bashed 2 black women just for the fuck of it. Pretty despicable.
And for the first time Ronald Reagan started to take a beating. Trump portrayed himself as not the Snake Oil Salesman he is; but a better version of Old Dutch and then mentioned some out of context, sketchy or hard to believe stuff he claimed he did better than Reagan.
Then he called himself the most successful first term president in all American History. So Lincoln? Washington? all just a warmup for Trump? The idiots in the crowd bought it.
Political violence doesn’t seem like its far off when you see the way Trump irresponsibly manipulates the fools who cling to him still. I guess its tempting to live in a World where everyone but you and Trump are wrong.
And he found time to congratulate himself for solving unemployment for African Americans.
On to an attack on the Democrats. Is there any doubt he’ll launch a criminal probe of any opponent in the next General Election?
Hillary got bashed, Obama got bashed. Even George W Bush got trashed. The crowd loved it. Lets face it these people were members of Cult 45.
Frightening repeated calls for Isolationism concerning his Wall and some denigrating comments he half bought back about the president of Mexico were in there.
For awhile he was boasting about his tax plan. The he was using a theoretical nuclear attack on the Olympics as a laugh line. Then he took all the credit for the success of the Olympics themselves.
75 minutes in he’s again boasting of the size of the crowd he drew and criticizing how the media covers it, trying to floor direct the news coverage through sheer bullying.
Like Dana Loesch at CPAC and every other republican for the last 18 months he extolled the crowd by denigrating the media. Lots of Stalin Era terms like Fake News were used by the president in his fuhrer furor.
Over and over he stated that since he’s good news copy he’s a good president. This is about the stupidest justification for presidency ever including the platforms of everyone who ever lost including Eugene V Debs.
He bashed the press over and over. Tonight for whatever reason it was Chuck Todd who was he subject of the not so funny insult “Sleepy Eyes”. The guy has red hair, couldn’t Trump have done better? Whatever. This week he says he hates MSNBC more than CNN and especially hates Meet The Press. It was petty and small.
On to bashing Peggy Noonan and The “Failing New York Times. He claims he likes Noonan, he just hates that she dares to criticize him. I guess somehow that relates to the Reagan-bashing? She did work for him.
He then imitated himself as ‘a real politician.’ It was better than his serious comments to be honest. About 2 minutes of pantomiming here. Circus skills were on display from the president as he’s basically a clown anyway.
Throwing people in jail, arresting people and killing drug dealers come up over and over. It’s pretty damn scary thinking this is what’s floating around his mind all day.
Of course no mention of the chaos or Stormy Daniels as the most secretive least transparent president ever just basically kept puffin’ away with not so coded racism and one whack idea after another.
And he spent a lot of time interrupting himself as one thought pushed out another. Its hard not to notice the heavy no necked guy behind Trump on my TV’s left who looks seriously inbred next to the lone minorities, 2 people holding up shirts referring to China (Jared’s fans?) at the rally.
As always, the whole speech was disparate and weird. Using violent analogies as a crutch he wheeled from one idea to another.
We could tell two things-
-Donald Trump loves the Death Penalty
– Donald Trump is winging it all the time now and needs the crowds approval. As they go he goes, he stands for nothing.
Then of course it was back to election night and recounting his “Historic’ Russian influenced fluke victory.
Now as Trump moves you can see there is in fact one black person there. I guess good for her?
The whole story of election night has become like Hitler talking about World War 1, but with Bones Spurs.
And then an attack on CNN and more puffery about election night. The margin of victory was either razor slim or Historic from moment to moment.
He did whine about the idea he would be Impeached. Wonder why he thinks that? The he misrepresented his education again and claimed he went to Wharton. He went to the Wharton Campus and took Real Estate Programs (that didn’t last at the school). Maybe he took a management class that some actual Wharton students took. I’m sure the school is proud a man who went bankrupt 3 times attributes his success to them. I don’t think they’re ever going to be a “Trump Hall” at the school, unless its Sexual Assault Trauma Counseling Center.
Trump looking bored and out of it moments after he got done puffing. Saccone looks plain nuts.
And we all had to hear the Keep America Great slogan he’s already unveiled for 2020 re-election effort, which started November 9th 2016.
Then Militarism was up for a few boasts and lies where he talked about an incredible American weakness Kim Jong-Un must have loved hearing about. Someone needs to explain to him that they navy is smaller than world war two becuae 1- its more effective and 2- one third of the ships are no longer carrying coal behind the actual combat ships. His military misconceptions were stark and frightening.
And of course Trump thinks everyones all wrong to about how he’s pointlessly cozying up to horrible Dictator Kim Jong-Un. Kindred spirits maybe? Anyway turns out he’s sure that the North Koreans will love everything he says and do whatever he wants. He then derided the media for questioning why he would do something so extreme without getting a thing in return. He seemed so frustrated on this point that theres probably no way he reconsiders this unbelievably stupid move.
Finally, having spewed hate apparently off the top of his head for nearly 90 minutes, Trump finally started to introduce the keynote speaker, GOP Hater Rick Saccone, a man who sounded like he had just swallowed broken glass. And then mercifully the coverage ended.
Seriously this was pure Nazi brainwashing. Gaslighting, lies, exaggerations, some pure bullshitting about his popularity being at an all time high when its stagnant below 40 since weeks into his presidency.
It was a deep dive into a non reality in the guise of a campaign rally. In fact he barely mentioned the candidate at all. He seems to have moved on from dramatic tales of teachers needing guns and hypothetical tales of personal bravery that was part of his whole mishandling of America’s Gun Massacre Problem last week. Back to xenophobia and Them-ism with a vengeance.
As the misappropriated legally forbidden Rolling Stones song he wont stop playing sadly played to the collected losers and racists who showed up on a cold winter night to watch a madman it was about as disturbing as could be. Every box checked off on the “Tin Pot Dictator Fascinated with Hitler” checklist.
Like all Trump speeches it was based largely on the first 5 minutes of 1970’s “Patton” docu-drama about the hard charging World War Two general. He deeply misunderstands this movie, but his political style is pretty much wholly based on it.
In this terrible speech Trump hit on most of the themes assocuated with the start of Word War One and Two and especially Weimar and early Nazi Germany.
There was militarism and a call to strengthen the military. There was the blaming of a small section of society for every manner of problems. There was the Gaslighting that Drug Dealing is equal to thousands of murders. I guess its im[ortant to note he made no distinction between marijuana, crack or heroin.
Grim, Dystopian, dark and racist are all words you could apply to this shaeful display of menta weakness by the president.
Trump’s speech would have worked fine for the Kaiser or Hitler himself honestly.
Like a Nazi speaker from the scrapheap of history there was blame heaped on political opponents. It was repeatedly implied the media should be harmed to help America out. There was an attack on our Allies as well as bellicose talk of the campaign against ISIS where the seemingly made up statistic of 98% of territory recovered from ‘the Caliphate’. Islamophobia and scorn towards immigrants were themes. Protectionism was in there when he touted the steel and aluminum tariffs that will be paid by American citizens in the end.
UPDATE- the presidents staff said there WAS a script for the rally, he simply didn’t use it. Hard to believe actually.
Oh by the way, Conor Lamb got some help too.
