That’s a first: He buttoned his suit jacket! Photo by Richard Drew (AP)
That’s a first: He buttoned his suit jacket! Photo by Richard Drew (AP)
Everything has to sound good to Donald Trump, because listening to his own voice is what he does. It’s his job. He makes a claim, then he savors it for a day or two, then he exaggerates it because it sounds better.
Republished with permission from Lucian K. Truscott IV
How many more times will we have to untangle and debunk another lip-wagging screed of Donald Trump like the one he blubbered through at the United Nations today? I just went through, line by bloody line, that interminable jumble of lies, exaggerations, pure gibberish, and unmitigated hate, 57 minutes of it. I don’t even know where to begin. So, I’ll just randomly scroll through it and stop and see what he’s saying. Here we are, around minute 48:
Clean. I call it clean, beautiful coal. You can do things today with coal that you couldn’t have done 10 years ago, 15 years. So I have a little standing order in the White House. Never use the word coal, only use the words clean, beautiful coal. Sounds much better, doesn’t it?
What can you say about something as infantile as that? He’s standing in the United Nations, in the well of the General Assembly no less, and he’s treating this gathering of diplomats from almost 200 member nations as if he’s speaking to a rally of the MAGA faithful in Iowa or Alabama or Tennessee. Those last two sentences could have flown from his mouth as little red hats rather than sound. And that’s not even close to the worst of it.
Trump stood up there this morning and told the U.N. that he’s taking on drug smugglers “using the supreme power of the United States military” because “we lost 300,000 people last year to drugs. 300,000.” Not even close. His own CDC, what’s left of it anyway, reports that the real number of drug overdose deaths for last year is 80,391. That’s a big number, for sure, but why does he have to exaggerate it all the way up to 300,000? Because he’s Donald Trump, that’s why.
He seemed fixated on the number, 300,000, today. Listen to this: “The previous administration also lost nearly 300,000 children. Think of that. They lost more than 300,000 children, little children who were trafficked into the United States on the Biden watch, many of whom have been raped, exploited and abused and sold. Sold. Nobody talks about that.”
Nobody talks about it, because it didn’t happen. There is a figure of 291,000 that represents the number of children who have not made asylum court dates because their paperwork has yet to be filed. The children are not “missing.” They certainly have not been raped and abused and “sold.” In fact, they are known to immigration officials by name and country of origin. It’s hard to figure what Trump seems to think, but it’s likely that because the children are not in ICE custody and on their way out of the country on charter flights, they are missing.
Where else shall we stop in our torturous journey through Trump’s toxic waste dump of a “speech?” You’ve read that he told the gathered officials from nearly 200 states that “your countries are going to hell.” Yep. That’s what you call diplomacy from Donald Trump. And you’ve read that he screeched and moaned about clean energy, calling it the most expensive form of energy on the planet. Yes, he said that.
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Lucian K. Truscott IV, a graduate of West Point, has had a 50-year career as a journalist, novelist and screenwriter. He has covered stories such as Watergate, the Stonewall riots and wars in Lebanon, Iraq and Afghanistan. He is also the author of five bestselling novels and several unsuccessful motion pictures. He has three children, lives in rural Pennsylvania and spends his time Worrying About the State of Our Nation and madly scribbling in a so-far fruitless attempt to Make Things Better.
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