After several days of the government shutdown because of the Congress’ refusal to fund Donald Trump's controversial border wall, the U.S. president decided to make a big prime time address to the American people live on major TV networks to explain his position. Of course, Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer and Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi also decided to make this same move after Trump’s speech, as a way to respond his claims and show their arguments. Naturally, it became one of the biggest moments in the volcanic Trump era. A political battle that only one side can win.
Donald Trump’s address shows conflict between content & presentation
Trump was the first figure to appear on America’s TV screens. His speech lasted less than 10 minutes, and it showed a remarkable discordance between the presentation and the content. After all, while the first element was not exactly a Reaganesque scene, the second one was good enough to make his point and attack the Democrats in an effective way.
Regarding the presentation, the big elephant in the room was the fact that Donald Trump is a sad and soulless technocrat when he reads the teleprompter, and the smoothest populist when he’s not. I am talking about a very peculiar reality that millions of Americans saw live on TV. It is a weird situation that gets quite messy when the president has to read emotional and dramatic lines.
During these moments the one who reads it needs to have some acting skills. And of course, Trump is not Morgan Freeman.
On the other hand, he delivered a decent message in which he explained why this is a humanitarian crisis. Also, he put the ball in the court of the Democratic Party to explain why some of the most important problems about the border crisis are fine with them.
Also, he made a powerful point by showing the hypocrisy of many Democratic leaders who believe having a border wall is amoral while having their houses protected by all kinds of security measures, including walls and fences.
Of course, there were some issues with the content of his speech, including dubious claims and misleading statements about major details related to illegal immigration.
Also, many people believe Trump missed a golden chance since he didn’t attack the Democrats by pointing out how they claim no border wall is necessary and how their spending priorities include some really unnecessary things such as the National Endowment for the Arts. Instead, the president focused more on the immigrants’ violent crime, which undoubtedly exists but it doesn’t represent some kind of national threat. Logically, this cannot be considered a big surprise, as theatlantic.com reported that Stephen Miller wrote his speech.
Pelosi and Schumer’s response worse than a missed opportunity
Getting to this point, while Trump’s address wasn’t terrible at all, Pelosi and Schumer had a big opportunity for a better performance to convince the American people that their point was the right one.
In fact, different reports revealed that their ratings were higher than Trump’s. However, what they did live on TV ended up being a five-minute horror show.
During their response, Schumer and Pelosi made the clever move of focusing on the government shutdown instead of the border wall issue. After all, this allowed them to concentrate their arguments specifically on the president, which is definitely an intelligent strategy considering how divisive he is. While their content was sharper than Trump’s, the main problem was that their presentation was so incredibly awful that users on social media immediately started to publish some of the funniest memes of the Trump era.
And in such a frivolous and superficial time as the one we’re living, being massively ridiculed on Twitter or Facebook is a determining sign.
In fact, the main evidence that their address was a big failure is essentially the mainstream media coverage, which wasn’t exactly a happy display of enthusiasm. Basically, there wasn’t a unanimous winner in this political battle. Nevertheless, there was definitely a loser.
Of many things we can conclude on this point, what seems to be the unquestionable truth is that Trump is a really lucky man. No matter how bad he does something, the Democratic Party will always react in a poor manner. Logically, fixing this major problem and getting back to the political center will be the key to beat the president and prevent him from getting reelected. However, it seems unlikely that such a move would be done shortly.
This is especially after the rise of radical leftist figures that are now becoming the new leaders of the party. The well-proven weakness of Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi is a sign of the inevitable twilight of the Democrats’ establishment.
