JANUARY 23, 2017
Photo: AP
Come on out from under the bed. There’s nothing you can do about it. Donald Trump is still President.
It was quite a weekend for the Trump family, as Dad took the oath of office to become the 45th President of the United States. It began with all the usual transfer-of-power rituals, starting with greeting the outgoing President on the steps of the White House — as you might expect, instead of escorting his wife to meet the Obamas, Trump bounded up the stairs by himself, leaving Melania by the car.
On to Capitol Hill, where the Oath of Office was delivered without a flub, but then came The Inauguration Speech. Now commonly referred to by critics as “The American Carnage Speech,” Trump pointedly cited the “American carnage” on the streets all over the United States. It was a dark and dystopian vision, without any rhetorical flourishes that would offer hope for or faith in the American people in general, only for his angry supporters. In a particularly awkward moment, he laid out in detail how his predecessors basically screwed America up, with Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush and Obama sitting no more than 10 feet away from him.
Trump seemed very pleased with the reception the speech received from his staff until the devastating print reviews came rolling in. Among the roughest, conservative icon George Will called the speech “the most dreadful inaugural in history.” (It might just be a coincidence, but Will was also let go from his job as a Fox News consultant this weekend.) Apparently, dissent will not be tolerated there.
Inauguration Day concluded with 3 traditional balls where President and Mrs. Trump danced to “My Way.” (Of course.) And there was the cutting of the inaugural cake, this one being a duplicate (except for color) of the cake that celebrity baker Duff Goldman designed for the 2013 Obama inauguration. (What is with this family? Even their pastry is plagiarized!)
Trump awoke on Saturday to find himself being replaced as the lead story on network news by the massive turnout for the Women’s March — hundreds of thousands of Americans hitting the streets in support of women’s rights and against Trump’s campaign pledge to roll them back. Worse, there were substantiated reports that the attendance at Trump’s inaugurations was far lower than for the 2009 & 2013 Obama inaugurations. In fact a side-by-side comparative visual of the attendance from the 2009 Obama inaugural and the 2017 one for Trump’s was devastating in highlighting the small crowd for the new President.
Trump was scheduled to give a speech at the CIA mid-day Saturday — a vitally significant address that Trump heeded to nail, given his antagonistic speeches toward the agency during the post-election period, using air quotes whenever he noted the “intelligence” that the CIA garnered against Russia. Given the importance of reestablishing a relationship with the CIA, Trump threw the opportunity away, taking his time to keep whining about reports of his small crowds and bragging about the 11 covers of TIME Magazine that featured Trump, more than anyone, he claims, in history. (For the record, Richard Nixon was on 55 TIME covers, so Donny has a way to go.) The sight of Trump standing in front of a memorial dedicated to slain CIA operatives and bragging about himself was perhaps not the photo op that the Trump team had imagined.
From all reports, Trump, still perturbed by the small crowd size issue, decided to push his new press secretary Sean Spicer onto the national stage prematurely, and let’s just say it didn’t go as planned. Spicer, who proved to be a pugnacious type when defending Trump on cable news shows, made no effort to ingratiate with the assembled press corps but instead began chastising them for slanted coverage of Trump’s inauguration, raising his voice so that it appeared that he was yelling at them.
In fact, in his debut performance, Spicer managed to tell five…OK, let’s call them “untruths”… in the first five minutes of his briefing, claiming as fact five easily-refutable statements — on crowd size, TV ratings, grass coverings, security delays, and subway ridership — that created an immediate lack of faith in what the new press secretary is claiming as fact. It was a very bad start.
It was so bad in fact that the White House had to trot out Trump Explainer-in-Chief Kellyanne Conway to appear on the Sunday morning news shows. Conway, whose job as become the political equivalent of the guy with the broom sweeping up after the elephants in the circus parade, did her usual thing that she does so well — changing the subject. When a reporter asks her “Why did Donald Trump say X?,” Conway’s usual response is a variation of “What you should be asking is ‘Why did Hillary Clinton say Y?’,” and she always manages to skip away without answering the first question.
That didn’t happen on Sunday’s “Meet the Press.” NBC News’ Chuck Todd (who usually plays nice-nice with politicos because, after all, he needs them for future “MTP” bookings) asked Conway about Spicer’s collection of “untruths.” She did her usual tap-dance, and Chuckles called her out for not answering the question. Conway dipped into her diversionary playbook for another off-topic response, and Todd one again called her out.
Again, and then again, Todd would not let her off the hook, and in frustration when Todd asked why Spicer would utter a “provable falsehood,” Conway finally responded, “Don’t be so overly dramatic about it, Chuck. You’re saying it’s a falsehood, and they’re giving — our press secretary, Sean Spicer, gave alternative facts to that.” Incredulous, Todd responded, “Alternative facts are not facts. They are falsehoods.”
And an internet meme has born.
With a weekend that ended with the President’s spokespeople becoming punchlines, the Trump Administration knew they needed to regroup quickly and announced that Monday would be “a day of action” with executive orders killing the Trans-Pacific Partnership and ending taxpayer support for abortion in foreign countries.
Still, as they say, you only have one chance to create a good first impression, and this weekend, the Trump team took several big swings at the ball and whiffed every time.
