{"id":20060,"date":"2017-02-28T14:28:25","date_gmt":"2017-02-28T14:28:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=20060"},"modified":"2017-02-28T14:28:25","modified_gmt":"2017-02-28T14:28:25","slug":"get-ready-for-trumps-coming-out-speech","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=20060","title":{"rendered":"Get ready for Trump’s ‘coming-out’ speech"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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No, I don’t mean that<\/em> kind of “coming out.”<\/p>\n

However, I do<\/em> mean that the president of the United States will step onto a significantly larger stage than ever before. The podium will be of, oh, standard size, I guess. He’ll be standing tonight\u00a0in front of a joint congressional session. The vice president and the speaker of the House of Representatives will sit behind him.<\/p>\n

The speaker will declare that “it is my high honor and privilege to introduce the president of the United States.”<\/p>\n

Applause will fill the room. Donald J. Trump will begin his speech.<\/p>\n

That’s when the pomp and pageantry ends and when we get a look at just how much he’s been able to “unify” the body to which he is speaking, let alone the country.<\/p>\n

I don’t know about you but I’m going to look at a few external factors as Trump speaks … assuming, of course, that I can power through the entire event.<\/p>\n

The Supreme Court justices will be there.<\/strong> Who among them will sit this one out? When Trump’s immediate predecessor spoke to these joint sessions, a couple of the court’s conservative justices — the late Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas — famously were no-shows. One or both of them said they disliked having to sit there while everyone around them were clapping and cheering.<\/p>\n

President Obama famously scolded the court for its 2010 ruling enabling corporations to give unlimited amounts of money to political candidates. The justices had to take it. Personally, I thought the president was wrong to do so in that venue and it surely rankled the court majority that decided the infamous Citizens United case.<\/p>\n

Who’s going to stay away from Trump’s speech? Will it be, say, one or two of the court’s liberal<\/em> justices?<\/p>\n

Who stands and claps and who sits? <\/strong>This is a fairly normal occurrence. Lawmakers of the president’s party usually clap and cheer at everything that comes out of the president’s mouth; those on the other side don’t.<\/p>\n

Republicans didn’t much cheering for Barack Obama during the eight years he spoke to joint sessions. I rather doubt Democrats will, either, when Trump stands before them.<\/p>\n

His defense-spending boost will be a big topic. He wants to spend $54 billion more on defense, ostensibly to “rebuild our military.” At what cost? Which domestic programs get the axe? Which Americans will feel the pain? Maintaining military strength usually is a non-partisan\/bipartisan issue. Something tells me when the president gets around to that one, we won’t see much cheering from Democrats.<\/p>\n

Will the president veer off topic? <\/strong>He’ll have a Teleprompter in front of him. He’ll be reading a prepared text. I have to wonder if Trump is going to be tempted to take off on one of his vaunted campaign-style riffs and rants about, oh, the size of his Electoral College victory, or about the “fake news” he says is being\u00a0peddled by the “mainstream media.”<\/p>\n

I don’t expect to hear the names “Michael Flynn” or “Vladimir Putin” come from the president’s mouth. I don’t expect either\u00a0to hear him say the word “Russia.” Nor do I expect him to talk about things such as\u00a0the difficulty he is having assembling his government; key appointees keep dropping out for one reason or another.<\/p>\n

But let’s get ready — ladies and gents, boys and girls — for an interesting show this evening, shall we?<\/p>\n

Pass the popcorn … and the Pepto.<\/p>\n\n

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No, I don’t mean that kind of “coming out.” However, I do mean that the president of the United States will step onto a significantly larger stage than ever before. The podium will be of, oh, standard size, I guess. He’ll be standing tonight\u00a0in front of a joint congressional session. The vice president and the … Continue reading Get ready for Trump’s ‘coming-out’ speech<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[13,14],"tags":[540,1312,1424,6712,2566,6718,5053,5125],"class_list":["post-20060","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-national-news","category-political-news","tag-barack-obama","tag-defense-department","tag-donald-trump","tag-fake-news","tag-joint-session-of-congress","tag-michael-flynn","tag-us-supreme-court","tag-vladimir-putin"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20060","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=20060"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20060\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20062,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20060\/revisions\/20062"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=20060"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=20060"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=20060"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}