Yes, there was. Next, you’re wondering where my learned analysis might be?
Well, I’m a working dude[1] that has little patience with mendacious politicians, and President Trump is considered, by many, to be among the worse.
But I have read maybe half of a transcript of the American President’s address to the nation last week, and skimmed another quarter of it. Here’s a confession: I do not have the knowledge base to fact-check the speech. There are many fact-checks out there, so I suggest, if you haven’t read one yet, go find such a work. If you wish to be assiduous on the matter, look for a non-American source that is not obviously biased. That may be difficult, so you may have to accept an American source. Perhaps CNN because, as Daily Beast (via MSN) notes:
Ben Ginsberg, a Republican election lawyer, told CNN’s Kaitlan Collins immediately following the speech that, despite the president’s claims and references to declassified documents uploaded online, there was still no evidence of any election result being incorrect.
“What stood out to me is that there’s still no evidence of a result of any election being incorrect,” Ginsberg told Collins.
“There still was not the documents, there still was not the evidence, although we’ll see what’s produced,” Ginsberg said, before responding to a number of specific claims Trump made.
Bold mine. Mr Ginsberg may not be part of the current Administration, but he’s still characterized as a Republican, and he responds with doubt about any and all of President Trump’s claims. That is notable for the independent voter, perhaps first time voter, uncertain of what to make of a fact-check.
But, returning to the topic of speeches and transcripts, as a social media user of 40+ years, communications in and of themselves can make my ears prick and stir feelings of doubt and concern. What do I want to see in a speech such as this? The essence should be mature speech patterns, a strong attempt to deliver an information and singular message, especially of shocking nature such as claims that the election systems are permitting illegal voting.
With that in mind, here’s two consecutive paragraphs from this transcript:
The cover-up of this colossal security breach is even more disturbing in light of the additional information showing that China engaged in other election related activities to undermine my first administration and our 2020 campaign. They did not want — they just didn’t want it. They fought like hell not to have a Donald Trump win, and for good reason.
As the documents we are releasing show, CIA reporting explicitly stated, and I quote, “In mid-2018, the Chinese Communist Party’s policy was to leverage all domestic and foreign elements that were opposed to the US president in an effort to reduce the US president’s votes and make him resign or prevent his reelection.” Isn’t that nice?
Note that last sentence, Isn’t that nice? Mockery is one of President Trump’s favorite communications weapons, just like the bullies who menaced younger children fifty and more years ago. Mockery is a tactic used by those who don’t have the intellectual tools and ammunition to keep up. It introduces ambiguity and intimidates its target, while warning neutral parties that they’d better join with the mocker, or run the risk of being a target as well.
It does not enhance strong, honest communications of difficult topics in the slightest.
The tone of the speech is to boost the ego of the speaker. Consider this:
Also, in mid-2018, China was working to influence the results of the US midterm elections, and later the results of the 2020 presidential election itself. Separately, in mid-2019, the Chinese government’s strategy against The United States was focused on undermining domestic confidence in the US president. They wanted to just make you sound like your president wasn’t so hot, when actually your president has done a great job, and they did everything possible to do exactly that.
They wanted to just make you sound like your president wasn’t so hot, when actually your president has done a great job, and they did everything possible to do exactly that. It’s a tell-tale of a man begging for praise for a self-evident greatness, and it tells the parasites of a human nature how to gain his favor. But for those of us paying for Trump’s War, his tariff disaster, and all the other mistakes, it speaks to his basic dishonesty and possible mental illness.
Overall, I thought the speech was yet another ego-boost. He covered many topics, including old grievances as well as excuses for his continual ill-performance. There’s little to no focus, and his sentence structure is constructed to focus attention on himself, rather than the problem at hand. It’s not the speech of a great, or even competent, statesman.
Just about every substantive paragraph has red-flags like this, at least the part of the speech I read; I think my reader will understand my admission that I didn’t finish reading the transcript because of intellectual nausea on my part. That such a pathetic specimen of a man is permitted on stage in his current role, and all that implies, is a mistake from which the United States will take a long time to recover.
1 For newer readers, I’m a software engineer, obsolete, and still working.
Mr. Monk’s Last Case: A Monk Movie (2023) is a lot like an extra-long episode from the famous Monk series of its derivation. The private detective Monk’s unstable grip on reality has begun to slip due to the isolation introduced by the Covid 19 pandemic response, but this really reveals Monk’s ongoing central tragedy of his life: the horrific death of his wife at the hands of criminals who were targeting Mr Monk himself during his time as a policeman. This mental degradation results in the loss of a book contract and consequent need to return the advance he’d been paid, and Monk sinks deeply into an existential gloom.
The Odyssey
