slate - The State of Our Union is Debased (psst...some real journalism)

[NRaleighLiberal]

http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/politics/2017/03/the_two_most_debased_moments_of_donald_trump_s_speech_to_congress.html

Donald Trump’s speech to Congress was just another reflection of his defilement of our institutions.

By Michelle Goldberg

Toward the end of Donald Trump’s address to a joint session of Congress on Tuesday night, he called out to the widow of Chief Special Warfare Operator William “Ryan” Owens, a Navy SEAL who died Jan. 29 in Yemen, killed in a raid Trump ordered. Earlier on Tuesday the president shrugged off responsibility for the mission, telling the hosts of Fox and Friends that it was “started before I got here,” and blaming the loss of the Navy special operator on his generals. Owens’ father has refused to meet Trump, saying he believes that the raid where his son died was hastily planned. The administration insists that the mission yielded valuable intelligence—a claim Trump reiterated on Tuesday—but Pentagon officials have told journalists that isn’t true. If Trump were capable of shame, Owens’ death should shame him. Instead, in his first major address since the inauguration, he turned Owens sobbing, bereaved widow into a prop.

As Carryn Owens stood next to Ivanka Trump, tears streaming down her face, the assembled crowd heartily applauded her monumental sacrifice. She appeared overcome. Then Trump ad-libbed, “And Ryan is looking down, right now, you know that, and he’s very happy, because I think he just broke a record.” In other words, Owens’ death had a happy ending because a lot of people clapped at Trump’s big speech.

To be honest, for much of Trump’s address, I worried that it sounded more presidential than usual and would thus bolster his repulsive reign. He read off a teleprompter and used a speechwriter with a sunnier disposition than the one who coined “American carnage,” a key phrase in his last big address. After weeks of refusing to speak out about anti-Semitic threats and violence—and days of silence about a hate-fueled shooting in Kansas—Trump opened by condemning “hate and evil in all its forms.” (Naturally, he didn’t say anything about anti-Muslim violence.) He reminded us all that he’s a great salesman, making a number of nice-sounding promises untethered from reality. He said that his administration would work to “invest in women’s health, and to promote clean air and clear water.” (In reality he intends to defund Planned Parenthood and gut the Environmental Protection Agency.) He called for health care reforms that “expand choice, increase access, lower costs, and at the same time, provide better health care.” (As Republicans well know, health care reform without trade-offs is impossible.) Watching Trump’s smooth delivery, I imagined it going over great with the minority that voted for him, and I feared that mainstream pundits, ever-eager to sound nonpartisan and reasonable, would praise Trump for pivoting from the divisive mode of his first month in office.

And, as I was writing this, many were. But those positive reviews can’t mask the fact that by the end of the speech, Trump was back to being his familiar foul self. Once again, he put victims of crimes committed by immigrants in the audience, a standard trope of his from the campaign. He announced that he’d directed the Department of Homeland Security to create an office devoted to Americans preyed on by immigrant criminals to be called VOICE, or Victims of Immigration Crime Engagement. Immigrants, of course, are actually less likely to commit crimes than native-born people, but that is immaterial to Trump, who has now enlisted the American government in a xenophobic propaganda operation. Had it not been for the stunt with Owens’ widow, the rollout of VOICE would have been the most debased moment of the night.

[dalton99a]

1. Kick.

[malaise]

2. K & R

for truth

[yallerdawg]

3. I don't recall a "State of the Union" address...

where the "speaker of teleprompter words" didn't actually declare the "state of the union."

Still campaigning? Or just clueless and incompetent?

[Caliman73]

5. It wasn't a "State of the Union" address

Those are typically done after the first year of a new president's term. Trump asked for a special joint-session of congress to lay out his agenda.

To answer your questions however... Yes. He is constantly campaigning because that is all that he knows how to do. He can't lead and he can't manage so he promotes (mainly himself). Yes and Yes, your questions are not mutually exclusive. Trump is clueless and incompetent. He uses bluster and self promotion to mask his very real and very serious deficits in actual executive skill.

[yallerdawg]

6. It wasn't 'as advertised'?

"You say tomato - I say tomato."

State of the Union address transcript

[Cha]

4. K

[scarletwoman]

7. Kick & Rec. nt