Donald Trump so rushed through his address to the nation last night that he gave the impression he didn’t really want to be there. Perhaps he was only going through the motions because his newly-in-the-news chief of staff Susie Wiles convinced him he had to say something about his first year back in the White House. As tearing his enemies down is the only thing Trump likes better than building himself up, however, Trump actually devoted more time to excoriating Joe Biden than to praising himself, though praising himself did come in a close second.
Praising himself for his achievements, however, required Trump to paint a picture of the nation that was unrecognizable to a sizable constituency: people, as such. As he told the tale, America had never been greater, the economy never more job-creatingly robust, the nation’s standing abroad never more respected. It’s possible, I suppose, that Trump actually believes this, that the men and women who filter the news he receives are so subservient that his comments to his aides are like the famous remark that classic Hollywood mogul Darryl F. Zanuck once made to his: “Don’t say yes until I finish talking.”
Where Trump’s documentation of the stratospheric rise of our nation in the past year was lacking in verifiable specifics, he filled the gaps with adjectives and slogans. The state of the union was “amazing,” “greatest ever,” “never seen before in the history of the world.” And whatever still had room to improve was entirely the consequence of his predecessor, during whose presidency the nation had endured its lowest depths ever, worse than the Great Depression, worse than the Civil War. In the world of Donald Trump, at least as he depicts it for public consumption, nothing is gray; there’s either stygian darkness or almost blinding light.
Speaking of colors, Trump’s orange-ness has appeared to migrate downward. His hair was more silver than usual even as his face appeared to have acquired a deep orange tint. Whether that’s due not just to aging but to the hard hours he’s put in on the links, I cannot say.
I’ve written before that Trump is more politically effective as an outsider hurling calumnies at his rivals than as a president who has to take some responsibility for what actually is transpiring. When he’s not in office (2016, 2022, 2024) he brings sometime-voter malcontents to the polls and Republicans do well; when he’s in office (2018, 2020), he brings out sometime voters appalled at how he’s actually governing. He’s in office now; that’s the primary edge that the Democrats will have next year.