Trump's State of the Union Protection Racket: Either Mueller Gets It, or the American Economy Does

[DonViejo]

This was a weird, shambling speech but it had one clear moment where the president channeled Nixon to suggest the economy would collapse if Mueller continued to go after him.

Rick Wilson
02.06.19 4:49 AM ET

Well, that was weird.

I’ve been around long enough to read the secret terrain and hidden texture of presidential speeches and to understand how the competing camps in any administration push and pull the product into its final form.

It’s typically a long path from a date on the calendar to a State of the Union speech, but Tuesday night’s effort showed every sign of being created, destroyed, cut, pasted, reboot, and then run through an English-Urdu translation program and back again. It felt more like last-minute Sharpie-scribble than wordsmithing. It was long, discursive as hell, and its grace notes felt odd and contrived. Leaving the text aside for a moment, his performance was downright Trumpian: He’s always bad on teleprompter, stilted, reluctant, and barely literate; Tuesday night was little different, marked by his usual sniffles, the Il Douche hand gestures, and his tendency to veer between subjects without transition or pause.

It wasn’t just bad. It was downright weird. This was a speech that will go down as a truly strange moment in American political rhetoric. Trump going for uplift seemed so ludicrous that I almost took pity on the White House struggle-bus speechwriting team. Almost.

As predicted, there were a few crowd-pleasing nuggets excreted from the cloaca of some Kellyanne Conway focus group. They’re irrelevant; we all know that this White House could give less than a damn about policy, and the Democratic House and even the Republican Senate now have largely written Trump off. Few, if any, of the things he promised tonight will ever see the light of day because Trump will never dedicate the time, resources, or political capital to achieving them.

Since a key requirement of Esoteric Trumpism is that its followers live always in Year Zero, the Trump-centric internet is gushing praise over President Bigly Rightwords, treating his largely incoherent word gumbo as if he had delivered a modern-day Gettysburg Address. Hitting crowd-pleasing slow-pitch lines—“Boo, Nazis!” “Yay, heroes!” and “‘Merica!”—is like watching an airplane fly, or a monkey fling its waste; these are the expected behaviors of a president giving a State of the Union.

more
https://www.thedailybeast.com/trumps-state-of-the-union-protection-racket-either-mueller-gets-it-or-the-american-economy-does

[mr_lebowski]

1. Pretty epic takedown by Wilson, I gotta say ... enjoyed that (nt)

[C_U_L8R]

2. He's looking for an excuse for his failed economy

as well as making that stupid threat. He looks hapless.

[Squinch]

3. On the bright side, though, Individual 1 hasn't the foggiest idea to make the economy move

either way.

If he TRIES to trash it, it might very well be great for the economy.

[BSdetect]

4. The gop will continue to enable him way beyond 2019