Where was Donald Trump and who was speaking in his place on February 28?
The smoothness of his delivery was primarily due to the
simple fact that he was working from a script, from which he only slightly
deviated, throwing in a few ad libs. At times it was clear he was reading, but
for the most part his presentation was polished.
In all fairness, it must be said that the address was well
crafted and effective. It has been reported that Trump himself did most of the
writing with help and advice from family members and staff. However, since it
was also said that he wrote his inauguration speech—a claim since proven
untrue—we would do best to take the claim of his authorship with a grain of
salt.
Strategically, it was the perfect speech for Trump to give—hitting
all the right buttons and playing to an audience less interested in policy and
facts than in feel-good rhetoric. Which is why it sounded a lot like sound
bites from the campaign dusted off, prettied up and made ready for prime time.
He knows what his audience likes and keeps giving it to them and it doesn’t
matter that we’ve heard most of it before—ad
nauseam.
The Great Pretender continues to inflate, overstate, embellish
and rely on partial truth and skewed contexts. There are several online sites
where Trump’s factoids and misstatements are tested against the truth, and I
urge you to look at them. Any Google search containing “Trump” and “fact check”
will net you at least a handful.
Here are just a few examples drawn from the Feb. 28 speech
and checked by the New York Times. I chose the site randomly.
Trump: “We've
lost more than one-fourth of our manufacturing jobs since NAFTA was approved, .
. .”
Fact: “The United
States has lost a lot of factory jobs since 2000, but the biggest reason is
technological progress, not foreign competition. America's manufacturing output
is at the highest level in history — it just doesn't take as many workers to
make stuff anymore. Some jobs have been lost to foreign competition, but
studies assign a modest role to Nafta.” –Benyamin Appelbaum
Trump: “We have
cleared the way for the construction of the Keystone and Dakota Access
Pipelines -- thereby creating tens of thousands of jobs --. . .”
Fact: (He should have
said “temporary jobs). “A 2014 State Department environmental review estimated
that Keystone would support 42,000 temporary jobs over its two-year
construction period — about 3,900 of them in construction, the rest in indirect
support jobs, such as food service. It estimated that Keystone would create
about 35 permanent jobs.” –Coral Davenport
Trump: “I have
ordered the Department of Homeland Security to create an office to serve
American Victims. The office is called VOICE --- Victims Of Immigration Crime Engagement. We are providing a voice to those who have been ignored
by our media, and silenced by special interests.”
Fact: “The
individuals killed by undocumented immigrants mentioned by President Trump in his
speech received widespread coverage in local newspapers and on television. For
example, the death of Jamiel Shaw Jr., who was shot and killed in 2008 in Los
Angeles, was widely covered by The Los Angeles Times and local television
stations.” –Ron Nixon
That last one is an instance of shameless exploitation and a
cruel trick played on family members of those killed who were in the audience.
It’s been said that we are now, largely due to the Great
Pretender, in a post-factual world. But the truth is out there, and we owe it
to ourselves to keep seeking it.
--Richard Brown