President Donald Trump’s 2018 State of the Union address can be summed up in three words. In my view, those three words are boring, uninspiring and forgettable.
At this point it’s clear that Trump’s campaign rhetoric was meaningless — and that’s mostly a good thing.
— David French (@DavidAFrench) January 25, 2018
This was a cuckservative speech that President Mike Pence could have given. Far from moving the Overton Window, it was a speech full of based non-Whites who were used as human interest stories to sell mainstream conservative policies. There was the black welder whose life had been changed by a new round of Jack Kemp supply side tax cuts. There was the North Korean defector who was tortured and starved and whose leg had been run over by a train before he hobbled his way to freedom as a cripple. There was the grieving black family who had lost their two girls to MS-13 gangbangers.
Watching this speech, I found myself pining for the days when President Trump talked about Jamiel Shaw and trotted out the Angel Moms on the campaign trail. Of course they were nowhere to be seen tonight because he used the State of the Union address to make the case for his DREAM Act amnesty. In his bid to save Barack Obama’s temporary executive amnesty, President Trump has embraced a permanent legislative amnesty over three times as large which offers a path to citizenship.
It seemed like much of the speech was given over to extolling the wonders of the tax cuts. I suppose that is because nothing else of legislative significance has been accomplished over the past year. The only real news that was made tonight was that President Trump had signed an executive order to keep Guantanamo Bay open and will be pursuing bipartisan criminal justice reform this year which is a cause near and dear to the hearts of Jared Kushner and the Koch Brothers. Both have had a solid year with Jerusalem being recognized as the capital of Israel and Trump’s conversion to supporting this latest incarnation of the DREAM Act which has died a half dozen times in Congress.
In condemning Russia, China and Iran as rogue regimes, calling for a military buildup, boasting about bullying the critics of Israel and threatening evil doers and terrorists around the world who oppose “our values,” the spirit of W. was on display before this joint session of Congress. This was never more evident than when President Trump talked about the “Statue of Freedom” which stands on the dome of the US Capitol and the monument of Martin Luther King, Jr. It was a far cry from the days when he didn’t use this boilerplate conservative rhetoric on the campaign trail.
My eyes widened in disbelief as President Trump talked about the foreign automobile companies that were opening new assembly plants in the Deep South. He touted this as an exciting new development even though Mercedes-Benz, Hyundai and Honda have had plants in Alabama for years now. In declaring “the era of economic surrender is over,” he vowed to “work to fix bad trade deals and negotiate new ones,” which indicates he isn’t planning to withdraw from NAFTA. He said that “America has finally turned the page on decades of unfair trade deals” even though the trade deficit has surged to a new high and all he has to show for it is a mirror tax on Canadian lumber and some mild targeted tariffs on solar panels and washing machines. This makes George W. Bush who imposed a tariff on steel imports look like a muscular economic nationalist.
The line about lifting “our citizens from welfare to work, from dependence to independence, and from poverty to prosperity” is a ringing endorsement of Paul Ryan’s Better Way agenda. It seems to foreshadow that the Trump tax cuts will be followed by the Trump entitlement cuts. It reflects the conservative attitude that Americans who don’t live off of capital gains income and who demanded the repeal of the estate tax are all just layabouts on welfare who need to be herded into the workforce. Since the American economy is synonymous with speculators gambling in the stock market rather than crippling student loans, the dying husks of Industrial Age America and the expansion of Dollar General, there is no reason for economic pessimism.
I listened to the postgame analysis from Ricky Vaughn and McFeels and couldn’t help but laugh at the strained notion that President Trump was moving the public in our direction. The plain text and the props that were used to make the key points shows that this was a speech that Mike Pence could have given off the cuff. The reality here is that the Donald Trump of the campaign was a far more interesting, radical, exciting and popular public figure. This is a version of Donald Trump that has been drained and diluted by the swamp and who sounds much more native and pleasing to the Beltway.
If this is President Trump a year into his administration, where do you think he will be a year from now? The Donald Trump of a year ago was at his peak issuing a flurry of executive orders on trade and immigration. The Donald Trump of two years ago was steamrolling into the Republican primaries. This Donald Trump is talking about criminal justice reform, entitlement reform and a DREAM Act amnesty. The only reason anyone is even pretending he is /ourguy/ is because of the wistful memory of the campaign.
Close your eyes. Let a robot deliver the full text of this speech. Tell me this isn’t the sappy, hackneyed rhetoric of the President Mike Pence administration now.
It’s amazing that after that campaign Trump ran that he is going to get up there and talk about his plan for amnesty for Dreamers. You might think it’s 4d chess, you might think it’s a parody but no – it is simply what the GOP always does. Bait and switch. Btw are the angel moms and the remembrance project with Jamiel Shaw Sr. going to be present tonight as Trump’s invited guests?
Wasn’t the last State of the Union also about Dreamers? Trump had supposedly promised the press to cave so as to get temporary positive coverage for the speech. Do I remember correctly? WTF is this shit?
I won’t waste my time watching it.
When I think of all the campaign speeches I watched on OAN in 2016 I wish I had those hours back.
How many references to Our Most Cherished Ally will there be? To “Dreamers?” (It’s unfortunate that certain others have the power to name things and thereby control the discussion. I would have called them Las Cucarachas.)
I’ll check in here later to read your reactions.
@mestigoit
Absolutely, I am thinking my time is better spent watching Guardians of the Galaxy tonight.
I gotta say, Trump has lost my vote for 2019.
Yea, because that’s the next election year…SMH
Since you obviously do not come here to debate, pose interesting questions or try to convince anyone of anything – rather, you obviously come just to insult people, which should have gotten you banned long ago but I digress – at least you can be useful for academic purposes. For the record (and medical science / psychology), when did you become a faggot? Where you 1. born that way, or 2. did you become a faggot after your gay dad molested you and you choked on his unwashed shit-encrusted little cock?
I have better things to do than watch Fred Trump’s clone.
Here’s an interesting tidbit from The Graveyard of Empires:
Not going to waste my time on this.
He sounds very tired and worn down.
That’s what happens when you let too many Jews into your life.
Yup. They suck the like and blood right out of you, if you let them.
LOL, and completely correct.
Niggers are employed. Spics are employed. Jews are making LOTS of shekels on Jew street.
Trump is struggling to speak. He’s having difficulty pronouncing words.
He’s getting his voice back now.
I think he’s distracted because of the Stormy Daniels thing. Melania seems to be pretty upset about it.
It’s Hope Hicks in the White House, not some random whore. (I like Melania, but she knew what she was signing up for and she was probably a whore herself, sad to say) Look, Trump plays so much fucking golf, it seems clear his heart hasn’t been in his job. Either he lacks attention span or he realized he wasn’t going to be allowed to do the things he promised and pushing too hard would be dangerous. Whatever the explanation, Jews are firmly in control now and all Trump can do is tweet some politically incorrect statements sometime to pretend he’s still on the ball.
Don’t care. Won’t be watching it.
Watched 15 minutes. Almost makes me physically I’ll. No real solutions. The real problems not even addressed. Just a lot of telling brain dead, spiritually sick Americans what they want to hear.
Were those stories about the gook who got run over by a train and the jewboy who was sentenced to 15 years hard labor supposed to get me so angry at the DPRK that I will now support carpet bombing Pyongyang? Because if that was the intention it didn’t work.
Trump is very intelligent but his understanding of the issues is pedestrian. Nor is he terribly committed to particular policies. He has the sensibility of Joe Sixpack, which is a great improvement on the others, but he isn’t going to go to the mat on every issue when he has hardly any allies. His indelible achievements are trashing the media, reviving populism, and reviving Merry Christmas. For that alone we should be grateful. Instead of bitching about the disappointments we should try to send constructive criticism his way. I don’t know why he does some of the things he does, but his situation is complex. Populists need to take the Trump interlude as a gift of time wherein to start a broad-based “Trumpist” movement.
Some people like having their ears tickled by nothingness.
The very idea that this life-long mega-billionaire has any empathy for common people is absurd! It’s all a sham, and unfortunately, many of us were taken in.
It’s called desperation.
C’mon son.
There is a significant danger of Trump doing serious HARM to populism. Most people aren’t that familiar with the deep history of populism, if they hear populism and think of Trump, then they will just think of a faux populism that masks the same old GOP policies. This will make populism HARDER to sell in the future, as people have heard it before and gotten burned.
Trump as president and as a man is a disaster, the only question is, to what extent has he destabilized the system? Right now it looks like the GOP has completely re-assserted control, but it remains to be seen if they can keep people voting for them after a stab in the back of this magnitude.
Trump’s speech in a nutshell…
Presione 1 para español
Press 2 for English
Shakespeare said it best: “ it is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.“
Thanks, Turn… I needed a summary, since I didn’t (couldn’t without puking) listen.
We don’t own a TV any more.
We all knew, deep down, that Trump would either be co-opted, or destroyed. Nobody defies the Oligarchs and their Jewish blackmailers/manipulators for too long.
However, at least the Clinton’s aren’t in the Whitehouse. If Hillary had won, we’d have a crypto Jewish President now.
yeah, I feel ur pain… trump may have been a one-off, a white power blip on the inevitable demographic invasion slide into oblivion…and it may be that his wealth helped him avoid the necessity of cucking during the campaign… he did not need their money, and so therefore he was able to appeal to the white working class base… but although had no desire for money, he desires the approval of the media…and they finally broke him…
we can only hope that someone similar to trump will come along soon and oust him…highly doubtful that will happen…I guess we may have to get used to the browning of america…all we can do is raise hell via internet propaganda and continue to generate propaganda aimed at the white youth of the west… and also withdraw from participating in the economy, at least as much as possible…do not spend on anything other than the essentials…. we need white ghettos in urban areas…where we can live as do the feral negroes, outside the economy….impregnate white women and beat up nonwhites who live there in order to drive them out…
Mr. Wallace has the best analysis I’ve seen on this speech.
I was in a public venue when on a television in the background I heard Trump relay the story of the North Korean defector limping to freedom… My uncontrollable verbal outburst was “you’ve got to be f#cking kidding me!”
It all comes down to what happens on the immigration front. I have issues with some of his policies but never expected that the US would stop being Israel’s whipping boy or that we would embrace a non-interventionist foreign policy. We need a wall on the border and an end to chain migration and the diversity lottery. We need e-verify and other measures to combat illegal immigration. In addition we should not be giving away amnesty to millions of illegal invaders. Perhaps amnesty for the limited population enrolled in DACA would be acceptable as a trade off but any more than that would be a disaster. I’m not happy with Trump’s proposal but will wait to see what happens.
Did Trump mention the “holocaust?”
A SOTU speech by Pence would have been a paean to Our Most Cherished Ally.
I strongly oppose any amnesty.
These 1.8 million so-called “dreamers” have, according to what I’ve read (maybe a lie like everything else), an average age of 27. That’s a massive voting bloc which is concentrated in vulnerable states (California, of course, is already gone) and could tip the balance of power in elections. Imagine that– the deciding votes in the US cast by former illegal aliens.
Same as P T Barnum, “Prince of Humbugs.”
“Ricky Vaughn” says that just because Trump is cucking on immigration, Israel and the Wall doesn’t mean he is not /our guy/. Thankfully, HW made quick work of Lil’ Ricky on Gab!