Tag Archives: Trump rallies

national news

Teleprompter Trump vs. Twitter Trump

I read a headline today that wondered which version of Donald Trump we’re going to see Tuesday when he stands before a joint congressional session to deliver a State of the Union speech.

Will it be Teleprompter Trump or Twitter Trump?

Oh, brother. Neither version of the president of the United States is particularly appealing to me. Then again, I’m a critic of the president, so he’s got a huge mountain to climb to swing me to his side of the great political divide.

Teleprompter Trump seeks to sound presidential. However, he’s not very good at it. I watch Teleprompter Trump deliver remarks while reading prepared text and I get the feeling I am watching someone who doesn’t believe a single word he is saying. He speaks as if he’s being held hostage. His message sounds like one of those phony confessions one’s captors force a prisoner to make.

Teleprompter Trump is insincere. I don’t believe him when he speaks to us in that fashion. For that matter, I don’t believe anything he says at any time, under any circumstance. Scratch that notion. He is particularly unbelievable when he’s reading from a device that rolls prepared text in front of him.

Twitter Trump is another sort of creature altogether. This is the version of the Donald Trump that speaks from what passes for his heart, or his brain, or whatever source that produces those incoherent ramblings.

Twitter Trump is what we see at those political rallies. We saw that version of Donald Trump throughout the 2016 presidential campaign. He has showed up repeatedly while serving as president. He wails and whines about the “witch hunt,” or the “hoax.” He throws out those goofy and nonsensical nicknames/epithets he hangs on his political adversaries.

If Teleprompter Trump falls short of sounding presidential, Twitter Trump makes no attempt at delivering high-minded rhetoric. Twitter Trump makes me cringe. He embarrasses me, even though I take no responsibility for his winning the 2016 presidential election.

Which of them will show up on Capitol Hill to deliver the SOTU? It doesn’t matter to me. I guess I just consider it a bit of a back story to a larger drama that continues to play out — with a potentially tragic ending yet to come.

national news, political news

Anger is feeding on itself at rallies

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Talking heads all over the political spectrum seem to be speaking with one voice on critical point.

Donald J. Trump’s frontrunning bid to be the next president of the United States has been fueled by angry Americans. He leads the Republican field of primary contenders because, they say, he has tapped into that anger.

As the fellow who delivers my mail every day told me this week: “Trump is saying what everyone is thinking.”

Yeah, whatever.

The anger is presenting itself at these rallies. Protestors are showing up to disrupt the Trump events, which by itself isn’t anything new. I’ve been to more than few political rallies in my lifetime — dating back to 1972 — to understand that fundamental American demonstration of political expression.

What’s different this time has been the behavior of the candidate, who from the podium is fomenting aggressive resistance to what the protestors are seeking to express.

Now the candidate — Trump — has laid blame on a Democratic candidate for fomenting the protests. He says the noise is coming from those supporting U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders’ presidential campaign. Sanders, quite understandably, has denied such an accusation.

I am not going to take sides on who’s starting these disruptive events.

Instead, I want to focus for a moment on how Trump has handled himself when these outbursts occur.

It’s the strange behavior from the podium that has me most troubled. Never in my entire life have I watched and listened to a supposedly mainstream American political figure actually egg on his supporters to punch protestors “in the face.” One of those Trumpsters seemed to take that exhortation quite literally when he sucker-punched a protestor who was being escorted from a rally venue in North Carolina.

How can we tamp down this visceral anger?

One place to start would be for the candidate to change the tone of his campaign rhetoric. Do we need to keep hearing the same one-note samba about how “stupid” we’ve become, or how “we don’t win anymore” or whether we’ve succumbed to weakness displayed by “political correctness”?

I’m prepared to hear some constructive solutions.

Enough of the condemnation and recrimination.