The best response from Jim Acosta response to Trump speech..CNN's Jim Acosta says the President's address to the nation about immigration and border security was recycled rhetoric from Trump's rallies and should've come with a Surgeon General's warning that it's "hazardous to the truth."
?Wow! I'm glad to hear I'm not the only one who gets physically sick from the sound of Trump's voice! I don't ever remember having a reaction like this to anyone before. I truly believe this was a distraction from the bombshell from Monaforts lawyers yesterday. I read a tweet on twitter (sorry don't remember the news source) where according to a "insider" Trump didn't want to give the speech or go to the border but his staff pushed for it. Second interesting tweet, Trumps reelection campaign sent out messages to all his contributers to watch the telecast and send money!
Now I don't know how acurate these statements are but they sure are interesting. I have felt in the last few months that Trump has gotten lazy. He doesn't want to do "President" work, he wants to watch TV and tweet stupid statements and I think he is royaly pissed that he didn't get to go to Florida at New Years. He has no clue what he's doing and he will liston to anyone (Coulter, Lambaugh) that will tell him what to do. I truely believe he didn't think this shutdown would effect him at all. Now when he wants to go play golf he gets slapped down. Ivanka and Jarad were roasted for their New Years vacation. They truly don't care about the country or the citizens, it's just a source of more money for them.
After yesterday's news about Manafort and the indictment of the Russian women who was at the Trump Tower meeting, I think we are going to see things movea little faster on the Mueller front. My feeling, and it is just a feeling, is that Military intellegence is going to uncover activity that points to Treason by a large part of his administration. I might be off base but who knows? I don't think it would surprise anyone.
All in all the sooner this nightmare ends the better for all of us. Healing is going to take a long time.
I don't have a link but I read elsewhere that Mike Pompeo was telling people yesterday that the speech would be incredibly newsworthy; I got the impression he was hinting that Trump would declare the emergency he was threatening. Instead he gave a lifeless rehash of his one liners. Like a rally speech without the shouting. I have to wonder if he was not persuaded to tone it down at the last minute.
Did anybody notice the way he gave the speech? He seemed really tired, almost slurring his words.There was none of the usual bombast you hear in the rallies. I got the impression that there might be a health issue here? Also a presidential address to the nation always goes on longer than 10 minutes. The speech was a dud, anti-climax...
Martin,I also wonder if sitting at The Desk in the Oval Office where so many presidents have addressed the nation before him caused him to tone it down. Sometimes the dignity of those who came before us can affect us.
But it didn't affect his truthfulness. According to the fact checkers, the speech was rife with lies. Here's a fact check of his speech, which the researcher referred to using the term multiple "Pinocchio claims." His claim that Mexico would pay for the wall was called a four point Pinocchio claim.
There's so much fact checking going on that I noticed at least one story that was fact checking the fact checkers. Fact checking is now its own news items. Yay.
Also Martin, to your accurate point about the build up to the speech, which I hadn't known about but was probably one of the reasons I was nervous about it yesterday -- Pence had been working overtime in the build up to the speech to get Republican support for it. There was even a fund raising effort. And Pompeo had been on Fox pushing the need for border security last week. They were trying to make him look good now that the shutdown is hurting him on both sides of the aisles.
Last night I heard María Teresa Kumar (MSNBC contributor and member of Voter Latino) comment on Trump's speech (which I didn't watch). She observed that he seemed uncomfortable and the speech was lackluster. Kumar believes it was because Trump wasn't in his element, i.e., he was reading the speech off the teleprompter, and he didn't have an audience to play off of. I agree with her. He's more engaged, especially when it's adversarial (like with the media) or when he's playing to his fans at the rallies. He needs that high or fix of people's attention, positive or negative; otherwise, I truly believe he doesn't have a sense of self.
I feel certain he takes (likely even abuses) something (Adderall?), especially for those times when he needs to stifle brash impulsivity so that he can instead appear somber/presidential, and become focused enough to read from a teleprompter without rambling deviations. The result is a dulled-down, unanimated affect. Like last night's lackluster and uninspired(ing) "performance," this is in sharp contrast to his usual bombastic behavior in which his un-checked, dopamine-craving (I was actually gonna say crazed) brain gets its constant hits/highs from the it's-all-about-me attention he's so driven to whip up (Deetoo, as you said, positive or negative attention, makes no real difference to him). Being the ringleader of chaos is his comfort zone. Being instructed to stay on script and to sit still (no exaggerated facial expressions, no wild hand gestures) is not.
And Jeanne, I so appreciate your many insights--including your "Yay!" re: fact checking now becoming its own news item=a very welcome news trend that I hope becomes a persistently constant conduit for truth.
CDeanne- I don’t know if you heard about the apprentice crew member said that Trump snorted Adderall on the set https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.thefix.com/apprentice-crew-member-claims-trump-snorted-adderall-set%3famp
Jessi, I hadn't heard about the Apprentice crew member's remark, but I'm not at all surprised. Explains a lot.
I also want to add that spending otherwise sweet time writing about Trump's penchant for injustices, self-serving and deeply dangerous dishonesty, arrogance, and both instigating and inciting cruelty is really, really, really not in my comfort zone. But I'm also not comfortable saying/writing nothing. Am very appreciative of the lovingkindness and from-the-heart-savviness of this community that Jeanne has made possible!
This twitter thread from ophthalmologist and body language expert Dr. Jack Brown includes a lengthy discussion and analysis of the probable causes of Trump’s dilated pupils during the Tuesday night address. https://twitter.com/drgjackbrown/status/1083446660913479680?s=21