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Day one of Trump's launch of his empire of self-aggrandizement has passed, with dry, uninspired oratory, a flood of bile and executive orders—and the launch of his own wife's crypto coin grift.
There seems to be a bit of confusion about what the world just witnessed.
First, it was a confession of profound mental illness by the afflicted.
Second, it was a belligerent and dystopian declaration of repudiation against American values, in favor of a new manifest destiny where we will make war on small nations like Panama, and NATO allies like Denmark for territory like Greenland—where we already have military bases.
Third, it was a declaration of war against civil liberties in the United States. Trump intends to deploy the US military domestically.
Fourth, it was a signal that he intends to wage a secret war in Mexico, and carry out military strikes on Mexican territory.
Fifth, it was a political trap designed to lure Democrats into another “Pickett’s Charge” of the woke brigade that elected Trump. He baited the hook anticipating the bite.
Sixth, it was a declaration of economic illiteracy. His tariff scheme has the potential to destabilize the US economy in ways that the media doesn’t cover and his supporters can’t comprehend.
Seventh, it was an assertion of messianic delusion. The most chilling words EVER SPOKEN by an American president are these: “I was saved by God to make America great again.”
(For the record, there is another interpretation: maybe God sent a warning trying to tell the 78-year-old adjudicated rapist and convicted felon, whose faith is himself and his abuses his calling card, that the clock is ticking down and he should get his affairs in order.)
Eighth, it was an assertion of tried and true catnip for the collapsing corporate media. Have no doubt that there are no small number of corporate journalists of the Amazonian persuasion, and many others, who think that the news in the speech is the renaming of the Gulf of Mexico.
How long will it be until Trump goes into the map business?
Ninth, it was a performance in a theater of the absurd, scored by the Naval Academy glee club with the ‘Battle Hymn of the Republic.’
Utterly atrocious and deeply ridiculous do not do justice to the birth of the American Empire and the blessings of our new gulf where many fish swim.
In the words of the great Jackie Chiles:
It’s outrageous, egregious, preposterous.
(No, not everything is about you, Laura Sanchez.)
Meritocracy?
RFK Jr.? Tulsi Gabbard? Pete Hegseth? Kash Patel?
Tenth, it was the worst presidential oratory of the modern age. It was small, uninspiring, political and ugly. Only Donald and Melania Trump—with a little lift from the Princess Sanchez—could strip a dignified event of dignity so vividly, dramatically, and with so little effort.
The Trumps have no grace.
The Trumps are very skeevy, and that should help explain what was seen today.
Steve Schmidt is a political analyst for MSNBC and NBC News. He served as a political strategist for George W. Bush and the John McCain presidential campaign. Schmidt is a founder of The Lincoln Project, a group founded to campaign against former President Trump. It became the most financially successful Super-PAC in American history, raising almost $100 million to campaign against Trump's failed 2020 re-election bid. He left the group in 2021.
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