It’s no secret that Donald Trump, simply months earlier than he ran for the job of strongest man on this planet, was internet hosting Season 7 of “
It’s no secret that Donald Trump, simply months earlier than he ran for the job of strongest man on this planet, was internet hosting Season 7 of “The Superstar Apprentice.” However not all his TV appearances as president have been as reality-fied as one may need anticipated, particularly his sedate, from-the-TelePrompTer State of the Union speeches.
The TV president made up for that Tuesday night time with a dumbfounding, stunt-laden spectacle, much less a presidential handle than an “Apprentice” finale wrapped in an Oprah episode stuffed inside a viral YouTube video and dropped into the center of a WrestleMania match.
The speech was jammed with extra twists and giveaways than a two-hour “Survivor” finale. President Trump awarded a younger lady within the viewers a scholarship. He had his spouse, Melania, drape a Presidential Medal of Freedom across the paleoconservative shock jock Rush Limbaugh. He organized a reunion between a deployed soldier and his spouse, similar to the surprise-military-return movies that TV morning shows love.
And all these deliberate moments could have been overshadowed by a drama-filled, two-part installment of “The Actual Politicians of D.C.,” co-starring his antagonist Nancy Pelosi, the speaker of the Home. Earlier than he started his speech, he appeared to refuse her supply of a handshake; after he completed, she ripped up her copy of it on digicam.
Neither of them, it appears, got here there to make buddies.
For the president, the handle had apparent political objectives, coming amid the impeachment trial and initially of an election 12 months. Nevertheless it additionally appeared constructed to make noise and get lasting consideration amid a crazy-busy political information week.
A State of the Union handle, even in calmer instances, is an evanescent factor. A president strikes a brief tone, rattles off some aspirational proposals that may most likely by no means materialize and the press polishes it off by midday the following day.
This time, unusually, President Trump discovered himself sandwiched, like a community public-service announcement, into the area between two larger political tales.
Since Monday night time, community information crews had been looking the haunted cornfield into which the outcomes of the Iowa Democratic caucus had vanished. Hours earlier than the speech, when cable analysts would usually be predigesting State of the Union nuggets, CNN’s John King and MSNBC’s Steve Kornacki have been speed-swiping via a belated dump of caucus knowledge.
And the day after his handle, the president had an appointment with predestination, because the Senate was scheduled for a Wednesday vote that might, barring stunning information or mass hypnosis, acquit him on impeachment prices.
Certainly, in the event you’ve been following the impeachment saga, the State of the Union was like Washington’s most formidable crossover occasion, with not solely the senator-jurors current but additionally Chief Justice John Roberts (whom Mr. Trump chatted up on his method down the aisle) and figures talked about within the testimony, like Secretary of State Mike Pompeo.
The president, nevertheless tempted, by no means talked about impeachment. As a substitute, he started with a protracted string of economic statistics and boasts. Congressional Republicans rose and clapped, sat, rose and clapped once more, sentence after sentence, a P90X exercise of election-year fealty. (They set a raucous tone early, chanting “4 extra years!” in case you weren’t clear on the subtext.)
For properly over an hour, Mr. Trump supplied a preview of his re-election argument, a protracted listing of superlatives adopted by an effort to melt his picture for swing voters, adopted by rehardening it for his base.
A number of instances, he spotlighted People of coloration as his company — the scholarship winner, an aged former Tuskegee Airman whom he had promoted to brigadier normal — persevering with an effort to broaden his appeal to minorities, or at the least reassure white voters turned off by the demonizing of Mexicans, the insults of Haiti and Africa and the caging of Latin American youngsters on the border.
All this adopted a Super Bowl campaign ad that includes an African-American lady that targeted on felony justice reform as a substitute of interesting to his base — which not way back he stoked with assaults on black soccer gamers who knelt in protest throughout the nationwide anthem.
The speech additionally took sharp turns from sentimental to ominous, just like the adverse a part of a marketing campaign advert the place the music turns scary and the display screen shades to black and white. The president continued a long-running theme of connecting immigrants and violent crime, deploring sanctuary metropolis insurance policies for releasing “harmful felony aliens.” (Research actually present that immigrants commit crime at a decrease charge than native-born People.)
Over all, this was oddly each essentially the most and the least conventional State of the Union President Trump has given, a snug, acquainted listing of marketing campaign arguments that then veered into sweeps-month theatrics. It took the decades-long custom of presidential visitor stars, which started when Ronald Reagan invited the hero of a plane crash…