Like many of you out there, I have my personal favorite lie from Donald Trump’s State of the Union speech. But before I get to the reveal — there were so many lies to choose from; in fact, The Washington Post fact-checkers put the number at just under 30 — let’s review. I’m sure many…
Like many of you out there, I have my personal favorite lie from Donald Trump’s State of the Union speech. But before I get to the reveal — there were so many lies to choose from; in fact, The Washington Postfact-checkers put the number at just under 30 — let’s review.
I’m sure many of you went with the obvious — the speech’s theme of comity (or was it comedy?), in which Trump would ask for all parties to put aside their differences in service to America.
No one believes Trump cares a whit about comity, of course. We might as well be asked to believe that those Virginia Democrats had dressed in blackface to promote racial unity. And so when Trump said, “We must reject the politics of revenge, resistance and retribution and embrace the boundless potential of cooperation, compromise and the common good,” Nancy Pelosi rose in mock applause, smirking as Trump looked back at her. It was the meme of the night.
But Trump had let us in on the joke before even giving the speech, telling a group of TV news anchors that afternoon that Joe Biden was “dumb” and Chuck Schumer was a “nasty son of a bitch.” The next day, as if to emphasize the point, he was calling Rep. Adam Schiff “a partisan hack” for having the nerve to launch a House committee version of the Russia probe.
Look, history has taught us to expect little from State of the Union speeches. But history went overboard Tuesday night in the matter of one Donald J. Trump.
Trump’s expected big line in the speech — one that was met with near silence — outlined his idea of what cooperation means in Trumpworld: “If there is going to be peace and legislation,” he said, “there cannot be war and investigation.
