The February 28 address to Congress

Where was Donald Trump and who was speaking in his place on February 28?

 

This was not the mercurial shoot-from-the-hip bad boy of the GOP we all came to know during the campaign, but a calm and composed man who spoke reasonably, delivering a message of hope and proclaiming yet once again that he will make America great—again.

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