President Trump’s summer evaluation is coming up, and of course the various factions are going to push their stories. The President’s personal team, sad for him, are handicapped, and I don’t mean the President’s performance. I mean they’re hobbled because they have to project the President’s own approach on matters like these, and it’s a killer. It’s embodied in this over-the-top remark from White House spokesman Judd Deere to WaPo:
“I don’t know how anyone could see this summer as anything but successful with the president continuing to deliver on his promises to the American people despite the negative news coverage of this administration,” said Judd Deere, a White House spokesman. “President Trump has accomplished more at this point in his first term than any president in history and his policies are building a safer, stronger and more secure America.”Kids, today we’re going to measure ‘accomplishment’ using this stick.[Wikipedia]
Read it again: … accomplished more at this point in his first term than any president in history …
It’s the attitude of a Manhattanite striving to be larger than life with what appears to be empty boasting: everything’s the biggest, most important, the best ever.
This may work in Manhattan and greater New York City, but the rest of the country has a far different view of boasting. As a Midwesterner, it’s a big, red flag. The moment I see a statement like that, I want to ask, in that biting way I never use, How were you raised, son? Followed by Show me the numbers!
Given his history and his performance so far, his ineptitude in both domestic governance and foreign diplomacy, I have little reason to take Mr. Deere seriously; indeed, my first thought about him, former Press Secretaries Sanders and Spicer, and all the other spokesmen, is simply, How pathetic, followed by Have you no self-respect?
And perhaps that’s unfair of me. But there it is – for myself and the millions of other Independents who hold the future of the 2020 elections in their hands. Are they persuading anyone with this silly-ass rhetoric? Or are they just discrediting themselves?
