You’ve heard of “humble-bragging,” where you feign modesty while calling attention to how great you really are. Our president doesn’t mess around with such subtlety. He just flat-out brags. Also lies.
And he came to Minnesota last night to remind us how great he is and how well everything has been going in America since he took over.
I wasn’t in Duluth for the speech, but watched it on C-Span. (You can too, here.)
President Trump’s Olympian ineloquent display of lies, half-truths and (mostly) braggadocio left me horrified but not really surprised. (If you think about it, it’s hard to be horrified without being surprised but, with the help of the commander in chief, I managed that challenging combination).
My colleague Cyndy Brucato actually attended and her coverage is available here. So I’ll just pass along some of the self-flattery and inanity.
The president claimed, for example, to have delivered the complete denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula. (He’s done that before.) He mocked the news media — many, many times during his remarks but in this case for daring to criticize him for meeting with North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un. (I, for one, am fine with the meeting, but will declare Korea nuke-free when it actually occurs.)
Trump predicted that Kim Jong Un will turn North Korea into “a great country,” congratulated himself for making friends with Kim because “it means we’re safe.” (Trump, by the way, also described Chinese President Xi Jinping of China as “a friend of mine,” and wrapped up that portion by declaring that, thanks to his efforts, “everybody’s going to live in peace. … And, most important of all, it means that America is respected again.”
He played a lot of his old hits from the 2016 campaign, saying, for example, that “Make America Great Again” was “the greatest phrase in the history of politics.”
As he declared that, by their stand against his border policies, Democrats “put illegal immigrants before they put American citizens – what the hell is going on?” the audience, overwhelmingly pro-Trump except for a couple of protesters who were escorted out when they engaged in disruptions, replied with chants of “Build that wall!”
He took a shot at Sen. John McCain for voting against the Obamacare repeal bill in the Senate — although, with unusual restraint and perhaps because McCain is fighting for his life against cancer, Trump delivered the shot without mentioning McCain’s name. (But he described an unnamed senator who signaled how he planned to vote by giving a thumbs down sign; only McCain did that.)
And, in a surprise jiu-jitsu maneuver, Trump said that Russia actually wishes that “Crooked Hillary” had won the election, because of all the great things that have been happening in America since he took over.
