(Go to 1:10:57 to see Donald Trump's speech)
For well over two hours, Donald Trump addressed the CPAC crowd on Saturday in a scriptless speech that rambled all over the damn place, confounding the media trying to cover it.
Poor Daniel Dale of The Toronto Star should get combat pay for following Trump around to these speeches. He live-tweeted the event as he does most of Trump's rallies. So perhaps it should concern everyone when the man most used to hearing Trump rambles and rants tweets this:
Trump spent little time on substantive things, like his failure to seal any deal with North Korea, and a significant amount of time on ...wait for it...inaugural crowd size. He also promised a new bill to deny federal funds to any university that "censors" conservative speech, as well as taking cheap shots against all his favorite targets.
In his remarks at the annual Conservative Political Action Conference, which stretched beyond two hours, Trump also mocked the “Green New Deal” promoted by liberals to address climate change, disparaged his former attorney general Jeff Sessions with a faux Southern accent and defended his move to declare a national emergency to secure money for his U.S.-Mexico border wall that was denied by Congress.
“You know, I don’t know, maybe you know. You know, I’m totally off script right?” Trump said at the outset of his speech. “This is how I got elected, by being off script . . . and if we don’t go off script, our country is in big trouble, folks.”
But the Russia probe and those leading it drew the biggest ire and even profanity from the president, as investigations ramp up in Congress and special counsel Robert S. Mueller III continues his probe into potential collusion between Trump associates and Moscow.
“So now they go and morph into, let’s inspect every deal he’s ever done,” Trump complained. Nicknaming House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam B. Schiff (D-Calif.) as “Little Shifty Schiff,” Trump continued: “These people are sick. They’re sick.”
Noting that “you put the wrong people in a couple of positions,” Trump added: “And they leave people for a long time that shouldn’t be there and all of a sudden they are trying to take you out with bullshit, okay?” Trump said.
It was truly bizarre, full of strange stories, odd tangents, and just a ton of dishonest talking points that I guarantee will turn up again and again as we get into the election season.
