Who’s a good boy, huh? Who’s a good boy? Is Donald a good boy? (Photo by Jim Lo Scalzo – Pool/Getty Images)
Following Donald Trump’s address to the joint session of Congress Tuesday night, the news media — left and right — have been falling all over themselves about how presidential he sounded.
And it’s true that the address was decidedly un-Trumpian. He didn’t talk about his electoral margin. He didn’t bash Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama. He didn’t denigrate the media. He even refrained from doing the thing where he repeats the ends of sentences like a kindergarten teacher reading aloud to the class. (“‘And then the tiny bunny gathered his courage and jumped into the hole.’ Jumped right into the hole. Have you ever done anything that scared you? Let’s see what happens next! Jaxxsyn, do you want to turn the page for us?”)
But from the media response, you would think his accurate script read and bare minimum of restraint was the Gettysburg Address meets the Sermon on the Mount meets MLK having a dream.
You got it from the GOP, certainly.
Donald Trump did indeed become presidential tonight, and I think we’ll see that reflected in a higher approval rating. – Sen. Mitch McConnell
This is a very strong man. He’s a very strong leader and broad shoulders and speaks his mind, but you saw the heart of this President last night. – Vice President Mike Pence
He walked into that room as the winner of a controversial election. He walked out as the President of the United States. – Jeffrey Lord
(David Duke and Richard Spencer also gave the speech a big ol’ thumbs-up.)
But he also got big praise for being “presidential” from… Jesus, from everyone.
He became president of the United States in that moment — period. – Van Jones, CNN
It was perhaps the clearest sign yet that after 40 days in the West Wing, the President is beginning to come to grips with the public responsibilities of the office. – Alex Altman and Zeke Miller, Time
This was, for Donald Trump, kind of the best-of of the stump speeches […] but delivered in the most presidential of manners that we have heard from Donald Trump to date. Period. – Dana Bash, CNN
President Donald Trump’s tone for his first address to a joint session of Congress was eloquent and, daresay, presidential. – Matt Lewis, Daily Beast
Here are five takeaways from the most presidential speech Mr. Trump has ever given — delivered at precisely the moment he needed to project sobriety, seriousness of purpose and self-discipline. – Glenn Thrush, New York Times
The Washington Post. More Washington Post. NPR. NBC.
Okay.
Wait, hold on.
… Okay.
1. Y’all, it’s not like he wrote the speech himself. (Except, I suppose, to the extent that he wrote his inaugural address himself.) You can tell that by the fact that he didn’t talk about his electoral margin, bash Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama, or denigrate the media. Are we really giving him a tongue bath for successfully reading a script? Is that how far we’ve fallen?
2. We’ve seen him be “presidential” before. Even I have to admit, his victory speech in November (nauseating as it was to watch) was of a tone and messaging that befit presidentiality. He talked about unity and the future and dreams and being a president for all people. He stayed on script, avoiding veering off onto self-aggrandizing tangents, and even sounded gracious and respectful of the job he was about to take on. The dude knows how to seem presidential. He’s capable of seeming presidential. He just doesn’t do it.
3. The substance of the speech was largely shit. He called for an office and a Jude kriminell-esque registry dedicated to “victims of immigration crime.” He took a military raid that killed dozens of civilians and a Navy SEAL, dropped some Bible in there, and played the whole thing for applause. He talked about clean air and water shortly after gutting existing legislation that heretofore protected our air and water. He worked “radical Islamic terrorism” in there, against the specific recommendation of his new national security adviser. He lied 51 times. A solemn tone and a lack of overt assholishness doesn’t make a president. It isn’t even the minimum standard for a president. It isn’t even the minimum standard for a regular person in a semi-professional environment.
Jones described the comments about Chief Owens as “one of the most extraordinary moments you have ever seen in American politics.” Dude. Every president has done that. Obama did it. Bush II did it. Clinton and Bush I and all the presidents before them did it. Acknowledging and honoring dead and/or injured troops is pretty much the safest political move a president can make. Unless Jones meant it was extraordinary that Trump delivered those ten sentences without adding, “I think he just broke a record, like my record Electoral College margin, which was the most since Reagan.”
(And let’s not forget that that very morning, in an interview with Fox, Trump threw the military under the bus for the Yemen raid, in which “they lost Ryan.” So fuck him, and fuck Van Jones’s “extraordinary moment.”)
4. Being “presidential” isn’t part of the job description. It is literally the job description. He is the president. The only thing he is expected to do in the course of his role is be presidential. I don’t even know where else to go with this.
If the best thing that can be said about his address on Tuesday is that his delivery was the way his delivery is supposed to be, and commentators are saying that in awed tones like he delivered his address while delivering a baby while levitating while rolling back all of his policy to date, we’re in trouble, because that means Trump has wrestled our standards down just that low. Ignoring his lies, his America First nationalism, his racist policies couched as defense of the American people, because he successfully played the role of president for a whole hour when his lines were being fed to him, is going to fuck us in every awful way before we get anywhere near the midterm elections in 2018.
Seriously, y’all: Don’t fall into the trap of praising Trump as finally and decisively presidential because he climbed out of his own ass and put on a blue tie for sixty whole minutes. I am all in favor of giving him credit where credit is due and praising him for his service as president. He’ll just need to earn credit and perform service for me to do it. Any time now. I’m not going anywhere. Just… any time.