Donald Trump addressed the Joint Session Of Congress Tuesday evening and his speech was pretty much like one of his basic campaign pitches, only he added a few new items since he's been in office.
Still, he made sure to read it as flat and uninteresting as possible with his chin jutting outward the entire time.
He offered no real policies and made statements like "the way to lower the cost of health care is to lower the cost of health care."
He used Chicago again to tell us that crime has exploded throughout the country and he's now created a Gotham City style office to serve victims of immigration crime called, "VOICE."
I have ordered the Department of Homeland Security to create an office to serve American Victims. Victims Of Immigration Crime Engagement. We are providing a voice to those who have been ignored by our media, and silenced by special interests.
A victim of any crime is horrible, but to make believe millions of people are suffering at the hands of undocumented workers is demented.
Glenn Thrush nailed what the media reaction would be to his speech by tweeting:
The media views his effort as a victory since he wasn't calling the press the enemy of the people and boasting about the greatest electoral college win since Reagan.
See, It's all about the tone.
Politico.
On NBC, Lester Holt opened by commenting on Trump's tone.
NBC's Chuck Todd said, "it was the same speech he's been giving over the last couple of months - but the striking thing was the tone."
Savannah Guthrie said, "This was a Trump who felt like he was finding his voice in the sense that here was a scripted thing, yes, he was on teleprompter, yes, it was a prepared speech, but he ad-libbed. He clearly felt loose and conversational and a genuine moment inside the hall when he introduced the widow of Navy special officer Ryan Owens. in terms of emotion, that clearly was the high point. and he handled that very well."
Trump spent the morning blaming the military and HIS generals in particular for the death of Ryan Owens and not himself.
It was heartbreaking watch her cry on television, but many people on Twitter and elsewhere were offended that he used the mom of our fallen soldier, William "Ryan" Owens, to blunt the criticisms coming from Bill Owens, his father, who refused to meet with Trump for sending him on the Yemen raid.
Katy Tur was moved.
Patton Oswald was not.
Howard Dean replied.
Nicolle Wallace opined, "This was the same sort of confused agenda that was part Bannon, fantasy, part Bernie Sanders ideology, and part pure Trumpism. But if you are a Trump backer or Trump believer, even a reluctant Republican, you were very comforted by what he did in the hall."
She continued, "He went an hour and eight minutes without attacking the media, he went an hour and eight minutes without reminding everyone of the size of his electoral victories."
Tom Brokaw said, "Well, we've been waiting for the pivot since August, remember? The pivot to being presidential. Tonight this is easily the most presidential he's been. Fact checkers will be very busy for the next 24 hours or so, taking a look at some of the claims he made..."
And as tonally different Donald has been, Trump mocked himself at the end of his speech when he told the world that "the time for trivial fights is behind us!"
He's the person that's been picking idiotic fights and making nonsensical claims since he since he took office on January, 20th.
UPDATE: Tom Brokaw gets a fruit basket for not falling into the tone-trap that the media has and called Trump out on his dishonesty.
Brokaw said, "For example, the 20 million people on Obamacare are pretty happy with the health care they're getting right now, that's the focus of a lot of those protests. He talked about crime among immigrants. There's a lot of other crime in America that doesn't involve immigrants, including shooting crimes."
"We have had mass murders that don't involve immigrants and don't involve Islamic terrorists," he continued. "No one is condemning gun violence in the country, only when it involves an immigrant of some kind so he's saying I want to be inclusive, but he singles them out,"
He added, "And then when he talks about immigrants taking jobs away from Americans, the fact is, I've been out in those states. They're taking jobs that Americans don't want to do anymore. Food processing plants, dairy farms in northern Wisconsin, construction jobs. it doesn't mean we don't have an immigrant problem, we do, but at the same time, we can do it and still be accurate about it."
