The following article by James Hohmann with Breanne Deppisch and Joanie Greve was posted on the Washington Post website August 23, 2017:
| Trump’s turbulent Phoenix rally, in 3 minutes |
THE BIG IDEA: President Trump’s raucous rally in Phoenix last night was one giant attempt to rewrite history.
— These are the three biggest headlines out of his 76-minute speech:
- Trump threatened to shut down the federal government if Congress does not fund a border wall by the end of next month. “If we have to close down our government, we’re building that wall,” he said. “We’re going to have our wall!”
- He predicted that the North American Free Trade Agreement is “probably” going to be terminated “at some point.” “Personally, I don’t think we can make a deal,” he said of ongoing efforts to renegotiate the terms.
- And he hinted strongly that he will pardon former Arizona sheriff Joe Arpaio at the right moment. “I won’t do it tonight because I don’t want to cause any controversy. But Sheriff Joe should feel good,” Trump said.
— The bigger picture is that the president is in denial. His tendency to gloss over mistakes and pass the buck by recasting history in terms most favorable to himself was on vivid display. Just as the media was showing signs of starting to move on, Trump devoted more than 16 minutes to re-litigating his response to the horror in Charlottesville.
He defended the initial comment that he read on the day that Heather Heyer was killed and 19 others were injured when a car plowed into a group of people who were protesting white supremacists. Trump reread the first statement, but he notably omitted his declaration that there is hatred and bigotry “on many sides.” That is what generated the initial controversy.
“The words were perfect,” Trump said. “I spoke out forcefully…”
He complained that he did not get enough credit for the second statement, delivered from the White House two days later. “I hit ’em with neo-Nazi, I hit ’em with everything. KKK? We have KKK. I got ’em all,” Trump said.
Then he completely glossed over his news conference the day after that, in which he again insisted that “both sides” were to blame for the violence. “You had a group on one side that was bad, and you had a group on the other side that was also very violent, and nobody wants to say that,” Trump said at Trump Tower.
As he recounted the story at the Phoenix Convention Center last night, Trump complained that the press intentionally ignored his condemnations. “I’m only doing this to show you how damned dishonest these people are,” he said. “They said ‘he wasn’t specific enough.’”
Trump then turned to another page in his standard playbook. Essentially, it boils down to: I know what you are, but what am I? “The only people giving a platform to these hate groups is the media itself and the fake news,” Trump said. (Steve Bannon famously boasted last summer that Breitbart is “the platform for the alt-right.” After being ousted as White House chief strategist last Friday, Bannon is again running the site.)
The president leaned hard last night on the “us” versus “them” trope that he used so effectively during the campaign. Often, “them” is the press. Trump described reporters as “sick people.” “I really think they don’t like our country,” he said, leveling a serious (and patently untrue) charge against fellow citizens. Fox News is the exception, the president went on, singling out Sean Hannity for praise.
The media is “the source of division,” he claimed. “They are trying to take away ourhistory and our heritage. … It’s time to expose the media … for their role in fomenting divisions in the country.”
| Trump laments CNN firing Jeffrey Lord: ‘Poor Jeffrey’ |
— Somewhat incongruously, Trump went on to attack CNN for firing a pro-Trump analyst who tweeted a Nazi slogan after Charlottesville. “They fired Jeffrey Lord. Poor Jeffrey,” the president said of the ousted analyst. “I guess he was getting a little bit fed up, and he was probably fighting back a little too hard!”
In fact, the cable network fired Lord for tweeting “Sieg Heil!” during an argument with a liberal activist. “The phrase, meaning ‘hail victory,’ is banned in Germany because of its association with Adolf Hitler and his Nazi party,” Andrew deGrandpre notes.
Lord responded with gratitude, tweeting: “Thank you @POTUS !!”
| Trump rails on ‘the crooked media’ and praises ‘Fox & Friends’ and Hannity |
— It was more than the Charlottesville imbroglio, however. Trump sketched out an alternative reality full of what Kellyanne Conway once dubbed “alternative facts.”
“I don’t believe that any president has accomplished as much as this president in the first six or seven months,” the president said, speaking in the third person.
Trump asserted that his brinkmanship with North Korea is paying dividends, claiming that Kim Jong Un is “starting to respect” the United States. (There is no evidence for this.)
“We won Arizona by a lot,” he declared near the start of his speech. (Trump carried the state by 3.5 points. John McCain’s margin of victory the same day, as a point of reference, was 13 percent. Mitt Romney beat Obama in Arizona by 9 points.)
Trump falsely claimed that the networks were cutting away from his speech as he laced into them. In fact, all three cable news channels continued to carry him live.
At another point, he maintained: “I don’t do Twitter storms.”
| Trump says former sheriff Joe Arpaio ‘can feel good’ |
— Speaking about race relations, Trump defended himself by saying: “They were pretty bad under Barack Obama. That I can tell you.” They were bad in part because Trump spent years as a national leader of the birther movement.
Speaking of prominent birthers, Trump also asked the crowd what they think of Arpaio. The former Maricopa County sheriff, who lost reelection last year, was recently convicted on criminal contempt charges related to racially profiling Hispanics even after a federal judge ordered him to cut it out. “So was Sheriff Joe convicted for doing his job?” Trump asked, as the crowd cheered. “You know what, I’ll make a prediction: I think he’s going to be just fine, OK?”
Illustrating how off script Trump was, White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders told reporters asking about Arpaio just hours before the rally that “there will be no discussion of that today at any point…”
— This is part of a pattern for Trump. What made his speech on Monday night so rarewas that he admitted he had changed his mind about Afghanistan after studying the issue carefully. Last night, he was true to form. The crowd loved the red meat.
From the director of The Post’s fact checking unit:
James Clapper, the former Director of National Intelligence, said he found the rally “downright scary and disturbing.” “I really question his ability to be — his fitness to be — in this office, and I also am beginning to wonder about his motivation for it,” Clapper told CNN’s Don Lemon after the speech. “How much longer does the country have to, to borrow a phrase, endure this nightmare?”
“What we have witnessed is a total eclipse of the facts,” said Lemon. “What in the world is going on?”
The former acting director of the Central Intelligence Agency added this:
| Trump on the media: ‘They are trying to take away our history and our heritage’ |
— This morning’s press coverage presents Trump’s comments as somewhat unhinged. Here are 10 representative headlines:
- Fox News: “Trump goes on rampage against the media, sitting Arizona senators at Phoenix rally.”
- Arizona Republic: “‘Vintage Trump’: President unloads on enemies...”
- Associated Press: “Trump revisits his Charlottesville comments in angry speech.”
- Financial Times: “Trump threatens US government shutdown.”
- Time Magazine: “Trump Goes on the Attack, Again.”
- Politico: “A wounded Trump lashes out.”
- CBS News: “Trump lashes out during combative speech at campaign-style rally…”
- Los Angeles Times: “Trump fills Phoenix speech with charged language, accusing media and fellow Republicans of failings.”
- Washington Examiner: “Frustrated by governing, Trump returns to campaigning.”
- Vanity Fair: “Trump goes off-script in hour-long public meltdown. Trump explained that the biggest victim in the Charlottesville violence last weekend was, in fact, himself.”
| Trump tours border security equipment |
— How Trump’s comments are playing on social media:
The president’s most devoted supporters were energized:
From provocateur Ann Coulter:
The banner on the Drudge Report:
Elites were horrified: The GOP focus group guru:
The political editor of Newsweek:
The New York Times columnist:
An NBC White House reporter:
An NYT White House reporter:
Democrats were aghast: The longest serving member of the House in American history (retired Michigan Democrat):
The Democratic congressman who represents Phoenix:
A Democratic congressman from Tennessee who has been pushing impeachment:
A Democrat from Wisconsin:
— Finally, there’s an old Trump tweet for almost every occasion. Some were recirculating this post from 2011 overnight: