The Donald Trump Show

So what was Donald Trump's speech to Congress last night like?  Well, I didn't see the whole thing, but I saw the lowlights.  He bashed the Democrats for their approach to the economy, he compared himself to George Washington, he talked about how his beautiful tariffs will lead to prosperity, and he once again advocated annexation of Greenland.  In short, it was like a typical Trump rally speech.

Quite frankly, the idiotic references to the economy were the most memorable lines from the speech.  Of course - Woodrow Wilson addressed Congress and pledge to make the world safe for democracy; Franklin Roosevelt spoke to Congress in "the unusual posture" of sitting to lay out his post-World War II vision after the Yalta summit; John F. Kennedy announced to Congress that he was challenging the nation to put a man on the moon and have him returned safely to Earth; Trump complained about egg prices and blamed it on Biden.  Of course.  

it was a Trump rally speech because the event actually was a Trump rally. Democrats were a captive audience to MAGA Republicans' applause, struggling to found ways to protest, from wearing colors symbolizing resistance to Trump or for standing with Ukraine, which worked in the context of decorum in the House chamber but seemed awkward to some pundits.  The most effective protest came from Representative Al Green (D-TX), who yelled out that Trump had no mandate to cut Medicaid and was summarily removed from the chamber while Republicans mockingly chanted "USA! USA!" at Green as he was being led out.  (As far back as 1996, a British journalist covering the Atlanta Olympics compared the chant of the initials of the United States' official name to chants of "Sieg Heil! Sieg Heil!" in Germany in the 1930s.  The comparison seemed all the more apt last night.)

There was one bright side to what happened to Representative Green; only he was removed from the chamber, and not the entire congressional Democratic caucus.  If that had happened, the Democrats wouldn't have just been taken out of the House chamber, they would have been . . . taken out . . . permanently.  Fortunately, dissent against Der Amerikanischer Führer is not yet a capital crime.

The most effective counterpoint to Trump came not during the speech but after it, when one of the newest Democrats in the Senate, Elissa Slotkin (above), who proved to be a steely, strong tigress behind her dimpled-little-sister exterior.  Senator Slotkin gave a brief yet pointed response for the Democratic Party in her takedown of Elon Musk's reckless evisceration of the federal bureaucracy and Trump's plan to decimate the middle class as well as her forceful objection to Trump's caving to Russian President Vladimir Putin over Ukraine.  Senator Slotkin said she was glad Ronald Reagan was President in the 1980s and not Donald Trump, otherwise the United States would have lost the Cold War.

Aside from late-middle-age progressives who spent the eighties in college demonstrating against Reagan's Central America policy and nuclear arms buildup, most people should find favor in Senator Slotkin's remarks.  A former CIA operative and U.S. House member,  Slotkin proved to be an effective messenger for the Democrats.  It also helped that she is a national-security expert and also the junior senator from Michigan, a state that has produced so many legendary businessmen in the auto industry - the Chevrolet brothers, the Dodge brothers, David Dunbar Buick, Henry Ford, Walter Chrysler - whose surnames became trusted brands, something the current White House occupant has tried to make of his own surname . . . in vain.

In a party struggling for leaders and leadership, Elissa Slotkin appears to have provided just that.  She's probably the second most effective speaker the Democrats have.  Only Tim Ryan is better, but, of course, he's a hasbeen (for now).

Other Democrats gave effective responses to Trump's the media, like when party chair Ken Martin said that Elon Musk and his DOGE boys could go to hell, or when Representative Jasmine Crockett of Texas called Trump a nightmare she was hoping to wake up from, or when Representative Katherine Clark of Massachusetts called upon Trump to resign.  But not everyone saw individual Democrats taking to reporters.  They all did see Trump's speech.  However, I wouldn't say now that the Democrats aren't fighting back at all or aren't fighting back enough, as Chris Cuomo suggested . . . though the less said about Chris Cuomo, the better.  In fact, Chris's attempt at an even-handed view of Trump and his disgraced brother Andrew's decision to run for mayor of New York City signify the most spectacular drop in credibility and prestige by any political dynasty in American history (the falls of the Kennedys and the Bushes were more gradual).

One other thing.  As late as 2022, whenever you saw President Biden address Congress, you'd see two women - one black, the other Italian, both from California - sitting behind him in their respective capacities as Vice President and Speaker of the House.  Now, Trump is back, and the two people sitting behind him are both white males of Anglo-Saxon origin from the nation's midsection.

Not so inspiring . . . unless you're a red-state MAGA-maniac.

Mr. Macron Goes To Washington

So this Frenchman walks into a joint session of a Republican-majority Congress and starts talking . . .

That's the joke.

But there's nothing funny about the concerns French President Emmanuel Macron voiced in his speech before Congress this past Wednesday.  After some laudatory remarks about the special relationship between France and the United States and the long alliance between the two countries - longer than our alliance with the British, which didn't even take root until the 1870s - Macron stressed the importance of an interdependent relationship between the U.S. and its European allies, urging the United States to avoid a trade war, rejoin the Paris climate agreement, make the transition to a carbon-neutral economy, understand the value of rules and regulations in economics (Macron is a trained economist), and, most important at this particular moment, stay in the Iran deal.  He also vowed that Iran would never get a nuclear weapon.  

Macron's speech got some applause from Republicans, especially his remarks on trade.  But when he touched on all of the other major points, he might as well have been reading a chapter from "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory," for all of the good that it did to persuade the GOP majority.  Indeed, when he stressed the importance of regulating economies and climate science, neither House Speaker Paul Ryan nor Vice President Mike Pence (who was there as the presiding office of the Senate), sitting behind the French leader,  bothered to acknowledge those comments.

Macron has charmed and flattered Donald Trump to try to reason with him on this state visit, in which the two men have forged an unlikely and peculiar friendship, though their only commonalities are never having held elective office before and marrying women not of their own respective generations.  It got Macron a state dinner.  But he still can't get Trump to admit that the Paris Agreement is a good idea (he didn't try on this trip), trade remains a point of relative disagreement, and it looks more and more like the Iran deal - the last remaining pillar of Barack Obama's "legacy" - is on borrowed time. Oh yeah, those of you still angry with Debbie Wasserman Schultz for promoting Hillary Clinton and thus giving us Donald  Trump and thus threatening the Iran deal, bear in mind that Wasserman Schultz, along with several other Democrats, were skeptical about the deal.  

It is just at sort of cluelessness and duplicity among the Democratic establishment that let Trump get elected President and why Democratic leaders so richly deserve not being invited to the Macron state dinner.

And if Macron wants to change Trump's mind about the Iran deal . . . maybe he can give him a ten-page pamphlet that explains the benefits of the deal in monosyllabic words . . . maybe one that features Babar!                

Yeah, I tick off everyone . . . 

Mr. Trump Goes To Capitol Hill

I listened to Donald Trump's speech to Congress for as long as I could take, and I heard a lot of conciliatory platitudes that had little in common with his mean-spirited inaugural address but had just as much substance.  He invoked Republican President Abraham Lincoln to defend his own isolationist economic views (forgetting that Lincoln had no multilateral or even bilateral relationships to deal with), invoked Republican President Dwight D. Eisenhower's Interstate Highway System to promote his infrastructure program (but offered no specifics about what he wanted to build, apart from his great wall along the Mexican border), and again repeated his goal to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act (again, with no concrete ideas on how to do it).     

He also praised NATO after having dissed it, but thanked NATO members for paying more into the alliance, showing that he still views NATO not as a multilateral union but as a transaction. He tried to strike a positive tone for the future, looking forward to America's quarter-millenial, or 250th, anniversary in 2026 and the wonderful innovations and inventions we could see then.  He cited the great inventions that were displayed at the 1876 Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia (a fair from which blacks were mostly absent) and hinted that there could be a similar celebration in 2026 (forget our lousy track record this country has had of late with involvement in world's fairs, and forget also that the 1976 Bicentennial celebrations didn't work out so well).  His speech was easier to swallow than his inaugural address - but then, so is baby aspirin.  It was a kinder, gentler right-wing nationalist manifesto.  And his attempt to capitalize on the botch raid in Yemen by paying tribute to Ryan Owens, the Navy SEAL who died in that raid, was revolting.

And a President who's known for hissy tweets on issues of vital unimportance has a lot of damn gall to call for an end to obsession to trivial politics.  

And Steve Beshear delivering the Whig - oops, Democratic - opposition's response?  Well, it was a strong and solid argument for preserving the Affordable Care Act and standing up for working-class and middle-class values.  But there was just one thing wrong - Beshear is the former Democratic governor of Kentucky.  He defended his move to create a health-insurance exchange in the state, a point as moot as he is, given that his Republican successor has moved to dismantle it.  And if the Democrats need to get a former officeholder to defend the party, that should tell you how irrelevant current Democratic officeholders (not that there are that many of them) are.