Group Activity: President Donald Trump Address to Congress
President Donald Trump will address a joint session of congress tonight at 9pm ET. Watch live and comment here:
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The Sergeant at Arms is restoring order!
Now we just need the Grand Marshall of the Supreme Court to start issuing subpoenas!Report
He’s being downright hostile.Report
The great thing about opening with somebody getting tossed is that it effectively gives a layup to anybody inclined to play “whatabout”.
He’s doing a very good job of being hostile about 80-20 issues, 70-30 issues, and 52-48 issues. Even a 50%+1-50%-1 issue.
Some of the stuff like the McKinley/Denali thing or the Gulf of Mexico/America thing is silly and perhaps even petty but the comedy comes from being a president who changes it back. Can you imagine changing it back? Maybe you can imagine making McKinley Denali again (and perhaps even the Gulf of Mexico with a joke like “even the people who cheered the change didn’t use the new name”)… but he made English the Official Language of the US. Can you imagine a president getting rid of that?
It’d be easier to move the embassy back to Tel Aviv.Report
“Pocahontas” makes an appearance.Report
Well, it was a wrestling promo. He came out and said “These people aren’t going to clap for *ANYTHING*” and pointed at the Dems and then gave the longest speech in human history in which he said stuff that the Democrats were never going to clap for, not in a million years.
He called his shot then made it.
It’s like he read the first draft the speech writers gave him and told them to do it again except, this time, imagine the Democratic response to the speech… AND WRITE A SPEECH THAT WILL DESERVE THAT RESPONSE INSTEAD.Report
One of Trump’s instinctive political skills is that he attracts low propensity voters. One way that Trump does this is by making politics entertaining for people who normally find it a snooze fest. The liberal-left spectrum really doesn’t have any counter to this because the entire idea of both liberals and leftists reduces down to make people more political than they want to be but a lot of people really hate thinking about politics and don’t want to. But parts of the left have this idea that we can bring back the union hall while liberals think we can turn everybody into an NPR/PBS food, festival, and fabrics multicultural liberal by the right education. Neither are going to happen.Report
Jane Coaston put it like this: The core of the base wants a leftist pro wrestler counter to Trumpler. He wants to put on a show? WE WILL GIVE HIM A SHOW!!!
And the majority of the moderates in the party still watch The West Wing every year and so they think that the solution is bipartisanship.Report
No single thing in American politics has warped the thinking of folks who think they know how things really work more than the fans of the West Wing who try to apply that show to actual electoral politicsReport
It’s the same deal as people who watch Judge Judy and think they know how to handle a courtroom (or think they know everything about business negotiation because they watched “Shark Tank” a whole bunch of times).Report
The West Wing watchers do not want bipartisanship in my experience but want more of a Warren type to take on Trump. Partisan but also with the bougie educated liberal aesthetics. The people who want a leftist pro-wrestler tend not to be in the Democratic Party at all.Report
Well, Warren got pantsed last night. Might be time to shift to AOC.Report
Well, let’s check the polls. Maybe there’s some good news there that will make us all feel better.
CBS says… wait. This can’t be right…
I mean, we can easily dismiss the “76% of speech watchers approved” because people who would have disapproved were, instead, watching Daredevil: Born Again on Disney+.
Wait. CBS. That’s the old people station. Murder She Wrote and Matlock and whatnot. Let’s check CNN instead.
Ah, much better.
Good. Democrats don’t have to change.Report
I just heard a clip from last night’s address that reference this: https://www.lockheedmartin.com/en-us/capabilities/missile-defense/golden-dome-missile-defense.html
I was immediately reminded of this book: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warday, in which the U.S. is getting ready to deploy a similar missile defense system. The Soviet Union, hopelessly behind technologically, launches a preemptive nuclear strike against the United States.Report
Yes, that’s the chief argument against strategic missile defense; that it’s actually destabilizing because a defended nation can survive a counterstrike and therefore has no incentive not to attack (or, more correctly and as the story points out, it makes the undefended nation think that the defended nation could survive and therefore has no incentive not to attack, and that the only logical responses are immediate capitulation or an immediate all-out attack in hopes of catching the defended nation before its defenses are fully operational.)
The same criticism on a smaller scale was applied to Israel’s Iron Dome, the idea being that the only thing stopping Israel rolling over Gaza was the threat of a mass rocket attack, and that Iron Dome negating that rocket attack meant it was only Israel’s daily choice to not attack that kept Gaza in existence. (which…yeah, turns out that was exactly how it worked!)
Like, if Trump were announcing “we’re going to develop a missile defense system and we’re also going to eliminate our strategic nuclear arsenal”, that’s one thing, but he is very much not saying that.
(I’m not super worried because the reasons Strategic Missile Defense didn’t work in the 60s and didn’t work in the 80s still apply, and all Trumps’ idea will do is spend another few billion dollars confirming it.)Report
was that actually Kim?!Report
I put it on in the background as I was defending Wraeclast from its demonic denizens. On the rhetoric, a few thoughts hit me.
1. He speaks at I dunno, a 5th grade level. I have a 5th grader and he can follow Trump and get his jokes. Though, to be honest, my 5th grader’s vocab is bigger and his sense of humor is more ironic — but he’s raised by GenX wordcels.
2. Most people speaking at a 5th grade level would come across as anxious and have an inferiority complex that would make their rhetoric dreadful. Not Trump. He own’s his rhetoric… not a care in the world about how simple it is.
3. He’s not bright, he’s not clever, his content is boring… but dang, is he comfortable doing what he’s doing and has the ability to look for opportunities to ad lib, usually to good effect. There’s a strange existential *thereness* to his rhetoric… one minute he’s making up stuff that isn’t true, another he’s reading things he has no idea the meaning of, and another he’s just saying things he think might be neat.
What I’d call the total falsity of his political existence seems entirely authentic. This is genuinely difficult to replicate, especially for a politician. Politicians are acutely aware they are lying, and it shows. Trump? He believes 100% contingently everything he says, for the length of time it takes to leave his mouth.
His guileless guile is beguiling.
… not to me, but it’s fascinating to watch it work.Report
There’s a strange existential *thereness* to his rhetoric… one minute he’s making up stuff that isn’t true, another he’s reading things he has no idea the meaning of, and another he’s just saying things he think might be neat.
I did not watch this, and have no intention of doing so, but after a decade or more of watching Trump be the late political version of Trump (which is different from the Apprentice version of Trump, and very different from the 80s/90s tabloid celebrity version of Trump), I have a pretty good idea of how it must have gone. And I totally get what you mean about the “existential thereness.” Though he’s a New Yorker through and through, it reminds me a great deal of my redneck southern friends and relatives back home, whose storytelling might be described as meandering by someone who isn’t paying close enough attention to see the logic and the through-line. Sure, some of the digressions seem like little more than flights of ideas, but they contribute to the mood of the story in a way that shouldn’t be underestimated. And besides, sometimes it’s just important to remind people that Bubba really hates Kevin who lives down the street just past the old church that’s not there anymore.Report
Yeah, that’s probably a good comp.
I think if I were in the House and wanted to undermine the narrative, I wouldn’t fact-check or make a scene, I’d just make a point of scrolling my phone, laughing where appropriate, and basically just shrugging when asked what I thought… about what? He didn’t really say anything… the kids were cute, the moms were sad, I like fire fighters too.Report
He speaks at I dunno, a 5th grade level. I have a 5th grader and he can follow Trump and get his jokes.
I am chewing on this.
When I said it was a wrestling promo above, I was using the term in a vaguely derogatory sense despite myself…
But I’ll try to say it again but this time as praise and see where that takes me.
Well, it was a wrestling promo. He wanted to give a speech that people who never, ever, watch State of the Union speeches would be able to sit through. You know the guy who you’d ask “did you watch the State of the Union?” and he’d snort and talk about being bored for two hours? Well, that guy could sit through this speech and he’d be able to give you his favorite moments.
“I liked when he brought out the kid! I have no idea why he called that one lady ‘Pocahontas’ but I could tell that it was a deadly insult and so that was funny. He talked about (insert topic here) in a way that I could understand. It was a good speech!”
Holy crap. Trump’s numbers are going to go up.Report
A somewhat extreme reaction to Trump’s speech:
https://people.com/sylvester-turner-congressman-houston-mayor-dead-11691129?hid=3c053c0efc766c62c665adc1b439a49799be966b&did=16772709-20250305&utm_campaign=ppl_relationship-builder&utm_source=ppl&utm_medium=email&utm_content=030525&lctg=3c053c0efc766c62c665adc1b439a49799be966b&lr_input=ae3c9729e518d1cd658fbf0103513ef6c01d84d8206d0d1191a2f8b45a7004dd&utm_term=news-alertReport
I hope everyone who has argued, on this very site, the transphobic talking point about hormone blockers and HRT needing more study for kids (Despite this all being well studied for decades), has noticed that the very people demanding there be more studies then turn around and mock the very studies, in fact the mere idea of studies on this topic, that are designed to do that.Report