It's been exactly five years and a month since President Trump last worked on a joint Congressional session, but the biggest story of the week wasn't about what he said in an hour-old, 18-minute Stemwinder.
Maybe that's not a surprise. Such a speech from the President's reelection year is always more of a campaign kickoff than a policy prescription. However, what caught my eye in the first week of February 2020 was certainly about speech.
Yes, it was an episode of the original Trump Show when Nancy Pelosi (D-calif.), a speaker at the house at the time, tore a copy of the president's speech and raised the ruins like a trophy. It came after Trump appeared to snab Pelosi's offer of handshake when he reached the show.
Ah, the majestic pageantry of the Republic.
But the bigger context was that it happened at the end of Trump's first blunder each trial in the Senate, a day before his inevitable acquittal. Trump was being fired for trying to squeeze a then-unknown Ukrainian president to use it against former Vice President Joe Biden, who was at the forefront of the Democratic presidential nomination in 2020. The day before Trump's big speech, Biden layed a huge egg on a disastrous fourth-place show in the Iowa Caucus, so I say “I was.”
Pelosi has counseled the party to resist the urge to fire off Trump since Democrats ruled the House after mid-term 2018. However, in the summer of 2019, after whistleblowers revealed Trump's demands, she had to acquiesce after newly elected Ukrainian President Voldimia Zelensky revealed he would give him a “favor.”
The GOP-controlled Senate had no way of finding 67 votes for conviction, so Bluff was doomed, but Pelosi couldn't stop her members. They were still smarter from Trump, fleeing serious consequences from a two-year federal investigation into Russia's efforts to help him win the 2016 election.
Things seemed pretty good for Trump back then. The bluff each backfired as Pelosi had feared, so the president was still at his highest position approval rating. On issues related to Russian conspiracy, votes with the Democrats to make Trump on bluff each helped start the election year with momentum instead of the complaints that may have met incumbents at the end of the tumultuous first term. A stagnant economy.
Trump's straightforward predictions on 2020 Congress speech day would have pointed to a rather rosy opportunity for his re-election. He survived a full attack on the legitimacy of the presidency, and the economy was growing, even slowly. For Trump, his enemy was a chaotic scene. Biden appears unlikely to revive his campaign, and initially had one by Kamala Harris, a democratic establishment choice. It's burning Before a single vote was made. When Republicans saw potential general election opponents, they saw the Democrat avatars that are out of balance between the former mayor of Indiana's fourth-largest city and two fundamentally progressive senators from New England.
Job approval ratings reached nearly 50%, and the strong historical track record of the incumbent president seeking re-election made Trump barely rock, but you had to call him a heavy favorite. In that context, Pelosi's speech shredding appears to be a picket by a frustrated opposition leader, but it is not a real import issue. right?
lol.
Trump vs. Pelosi melodrama has been treated as the main news as the media business is always looking for an emotional blabber to seduce brain-dead partisan addicts. Trump and Pelosi, of course, were each furious, and Trump tore his speeches and accused Pelosi of being a crime by taking multiple victory laps.
It would not have been a question of lasting consequences that tore who rocks what, regardless of which wave or what happened in 61 months, but it looks even smaller considering it is in fact the most important news story of the week.
Next to the Kansas City Chiefs' first Super Bowl victory since 1970, it stuck to the New York Times front page the day before Union's speech. Dispatch from Uhan city, China – A place little known to Americans at the time – about “a disease that caused over 4,100 people to get sick and 224 people in the city alone.” On the day the article was published, Trump's Department of Homeland Security ordered an expanded screening of all flights from China.
The move even deserved two sentences that went deep and deep into Trump's big speech. My administration will take all the necessary steps to protect our citizens from this threat. ”
The pandemic will kill over a million Americans and change almost every aspect of our national life. Almost a year later, when Trump was fired each and attempted again – he sent an angry mob to the Capitol to prevent certification of his defeat in the same election he was once convinced to win – lawmakers were still wearing masks.
This is all a very long way to say that gestures considered fuss and ignorant in tonight's speech, emotionally plagued melodrama is currently consuming media attention, and the power to decide primarily on the next course. It's probably been happening outside the bright glare of light inside the house for five years.
The big address is like what Trump said about Zelensky and his oval office rhubarb, which is very different from the person who flattened him on the “perfect” phone in 2019. “This will be a great TV.” But great TV doesn't usually change the world.
