‘They Pre-Empted Survivor For This?’ Trump delivered a campaign speech to the nation last night while in a race against time with the Teleprompter:
Mr. Trump, always more comfortable with what he calls his “weave” of free association rather than reading from a teleprompter, raced through his talk as if he was late to an important dinner. There were no digressions, unlike his speech in Pennsylvania a week ago when he repeatedly veered from the topic. At times he seemed to be yelling — almost as if he didn’t believe he had to take the time to convince his audience of how well his first 11 months had gone.
Not surprisingly, he blamed former President Joseph R. Biden Jr. from the first sentence: “I inherited a mess.” He described a country that a year ago, he said, was overrun by illegal immigrants, its manufacturing base hollowed out, its cities ridden with crime. All these problems had been solved, he said, and he vowed more relief if people will wait to see their paychecks fatten.
But the message was a bit overshadowed by his angry tone, which seemed to belie his recognition that he was under pressure to show results fast, before a narrative settles that he has mismanaged the economy.
Mr. Trump argued he cut drug prices by 400, 500 or 600 percent, all mathematical impossibilities. He claimed that inflation had dropped significantly since he became president, without mentioning that in September, the last month for which the government has numbers, it had returned to 3 percent, exactly where it was on Mr. Biden’s last weeks in office. He argued that gasoline was now under $2.50 a gallon in much of the country; his own department of energy reports it was $2.90. And he claimed there were states where gas was $1.99; in fact, no state average gas price was that low, AAA reports.
All presidents bend statistics to their advantage but Mr. Trump has turned exaggeration into an art form. There was an air of desperation to the president’s arguments, perhaps reflective of polls showing that even those who voted for him believing he would manage the economy well, were having second thoughts.
I like this take from one Rex Huppke at USA Today:
The lying, of course, is to be expected from Trump. But what stood out was his frenetic, angry delivery. It was like he had somewhere to be and was hacked off that he had to deal with some speech thing. The 79-year-old seemed incapable of pacing himself and sounded, frankly, like an angry, unhinged old man. […]
The untrue pablum ‒ “we have achieved more than anyone could have imagined,” “we have broken the grip of sinister woke radicals in our schools,” prices are “all coming down and coming down fast” ‒ flew from his mouth with a raised voice and a snarl. This was not an unpopular president seeking to calm voters and assure them that better days are coming. This was an angry loon, a street corner ranting nonsense with the cadence of someone reading possible side effects at the end of a pharmaceutical commercial.
So many snarky responses. I kinda like this one from ‘JoJoFrom Jerz’ on Bluesky:
Hot take: having an incoherent septuagenarian scream-lecture America like a man arguing with a self-checkout machine that keeps yelling “unexpected item in the bagging area” might not actually be the emotional support animal we need right now.
Whatever President Wiles thought Trump might accomplish last night, he didn’t. Speaking of Wiles, looks like the death-stare is her default.
BTW, you simply must check out the Vanity Fair photos of Trump’s brain trust. See if you can count the number of collagen injections that Karoline Leavitt has inflicted on her lips. Does she aspire to be on the cover of a Stones’ album or something?
A who’s who of the nation’s most powerful politicians and tech tycoons are forcing through a proposal for a massive data center in rural Michigan as locals from across the political spectrum have come out in force against it, with one calling it “uniquely evil”.
Saline Township, Michigan, residents fear the $7bn center would jack up energy bills, pollute groundwater, and destroy the area’s rural character. The 1.4 gigawatt center would consume as much power as Detroit, and would help derail Michigan’s nation-leading transition to renewable energy.
Responding to resident pressure, Saline Township’s board of trustees in September voted down the plans, but the data center’s powerful backers – including Donald Trump, Open AI’s Sam Altman, Oracle’s Larry Ellison, Michigan governor Gretchen Whitmer, utility giant DTE Energy, and Stephen Ross, the real-estate billionaire and Trump donor who owns Related Co – fought back.
More than 18,000 Delawareans will get some welcome news in the mail in the days before Christmas.
Their old medical debt has been forgiven.
The early holiday gifts, which total $18.8 million in value, are the first round of the Meyer administration’s program aimed at relieving $50 million in residents’ medical debt this year. Delaware lawmakers allocated $500,000 to partner with Undue Medical Debt, a nonprofit that buys bundles of medical debt for about a penny on the dollar.
“No one should go into debt simply to stay alive,” Meyer said. “They shouldn’t have their ability to get housing, to get education, to buy a car, crippled simply by trying to stay alive, getting the medical care that they or a family member deserved.”
“This is about recognizing that our health care system today is failing Delawareans and doing everything we can in a pretty creative way, getting a pretty extraordinary value to eliminate a debt burden.”
Amen!
What do you want to talk about?