RESOLVING THE LEDGER
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See the full story · 1 sourcesTrump struggled to speak off-script and his transportation secretary jumped in to praise him. It was an uncomfortable dynamic that speaks to what’s happening behind the scenes, writes Holly Baxter
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“What a nice song,” said President Donald J. Trump, as he wandered to a podium set up outside the White House with God Bless the USA blaring over loudspeakers. He was here to promote a very normal, fairly standard Republican policy: jobs for veterans (in this case, driving trucks.)
It would allow him to rant about immigrants a little bit and to claim that he was taking back the economy stolen by “illegal aliens” and giving it to the most deserving of all Americans, service members. So far, so conservative.
What today’s event actually revealed about his own frailty and the behavior of the people around him, however, was interesting ... and a little unsettling.
Trump was reading from a piece of paper in front of him for this entire appearance, but when he did attempt to go off-script, it went very quickly awry. This policy is for “the amazing veterans who are with the — with, with us — they’ve just been with us from the day they were born, I suspect,” he said, in a trailing aside.
It was pure nonsense, even by the standards of Trump. It was so weird that I had to listen to it back to make sure I'd heard what I thought I'd heard.
“American highways and roadways have been terrorized” by immigrant drivers, he continued, who were driving “big rigs. Rigs like that—” At this point, a large truck caught his eye and he continued, “—Wow, that sucker is a big one. That’s big stuff.”
Trump is known for peppering his speeches with such interruptions, but these had a low energy to them and an undercurrent of confusion. Sure, he could read out from the paper that “radical left maniacs” have given out commercial licenses to people here illegally, and claim that an immigrant from Haiti who caused the death of an American citizen was “let in by Joe Biden.” But when he needed to elaborate, he could only say that such aliens had caused “many, many deaths, too many to talk about.”
The message seemed clear: Donald Trump is tired.
Luckily, transportation secretary Sean Duffy was there to add his own two cents. Jumping in with vigor, Duffy painted a suitably horrifying picture of the vulnerable American family being preyed upon by evil, English-eschewing migrants with designs on their two most sacred activities, Christian worship and mass consumption: “When these illegals were driving these big rigs, they were killing American citizens,” he yelled.
Whether you were “a family going to Walmart or going to church on a Sunday,” you were liable to be run down at every turn. Duffy had the energy Trump lacked; indeed, Trump used to be good at fear-mongering like this at rallies. Not any more.
Duffy then took a short detour into claims that President Biden didn’t allow background checks, before attempting to bring things back around to something resembling bipartisanship by stating: “There’s a lot of things that the radical left get angry about, because they’re radical, but safety is a bipartisan issue.”
Perhaps the most telling moment was when Duffy wrapped up his speech, placed his hand on his heart and said to the president, “I am grateful for your leadership.” Facing the crowd and cameras again, he underlined how Trump and only Trump has put “American roads first over the illegals who the last administration prioritized.”
“It has been just an honor to work with you,” Duffy continued, as he looked back to the president, before telling the room that Trump was really a “masterclass” in himself, and that “to watch him and learn from him is amazing.”
This extended show of fealty — which took up almost as much time as the talk about opportunities for veterans — earned Duffy a nod from the president, and presumably protected him from his ire. But this, combined with the frail delivery from Trump, pointed to something alarming: a president who increasingly loses his train of thought, who struggles to make the quick quips and connections he once did, and a surrounding team that is sycophantic to the point of absurdity.
It’s pretty obvious that there isn’t just a lack of pushing-back within the Trump cabinet; there’s a demand for time-wasting, toadying displays of OTT loyalty. There’s also clearly pressure to look the other way, to paper over the cracks when the president flounders.
The ‘Freedom Haulers’ thing, by the way, is nothing new. It’s simply an extension of an older policy, and there’s very little proof that it will do much for the economy, for immigration, or for veterans. But listen, the amazing veterans have been with us since the day they were born, and Donald Trump is a masterclass. Hand on heart, is there anything more you need to hear than that?
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