Домой United States USA — Political Trump Follows Familiar Playbook When Confronted by a Loss: Distract and Digress

Trump Follows Familiar Playbook When Confronted by a Loss: Distract and Digress

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“So, I’m going to be signing a national emergency,” the president said, almost as an afterthought at the news conference whose purpose was ostensibly to announce that news.
WASHINGTON — Standing in the Rose Garden on Friday morning, President Trump heaped praise on Rush Limbaugh, the right-wing radio show host, who earlier in the week gave his blessing to a bipartisan spending bill that did not include the money Mr. Trump had demanded for a wall.
“This guy is unbelievable,” Mr. Trump said. “Try speaking for three hours without taking calls.”
During Mr. Trump’s 50 minutes of discursive remarks, which were ostensibly to announce a national emergency to build a wall along the southern border, the president appeared to be taking that challenge himself.
Forced to confront arguably the biggest surrender of his presidency, Mr. Trump did what he often does after a loss: respond with distraction, digression and entertainment, through a fog of words.
There was no teleprompter. He hardly looked at his notes. There was just Mr. Trump, dressed in a dark overcoat and bright blue tie, free-associating in tweetable sound bites, and setting off the furious clicks of cameras every time he gesticulated with his arms.
The president’s public schedule said nothing about a loss, and indeed a White House handout was titled “President Donald J. Trump’s Border Security Victory.” His Rose Garden event was billed as “remarks on the national security and humanitarian crisis on our southern border,” and he was about 40 minutes late.
When he finally emerged from the Oval Office, Mr. Trump spent another 10 minutes riffing about his administration’s successes before getting to the point of the gathering, which included his new attorney general, William P. Barr, and the secretary of homeland security, Kirstjen Nielsen, sitting shoulder to shoulder with a group of “ angel moms ” hugging photographs of their slain relatives.
First, Mr. Trump praised his trade negotiations with China . “It’s going extremely well,” he said. But then he added, “Who knows what that means, because it only matters if we get it done.” He moved on to North Korea, expressing his excitement about a second summit meeting with Kim Jong-un, scheduled for this month in Vietnam. “We think that North Korea and Chairman Kim have a tremendous potential as an economic force and economic power,” Mr. Trump said.
After his burying-the-news preamble, Mr. Trump finally got to the point.
“So, I’m going to be signing a national emergency,” Mr. Trump said, almost as an afterthought. Anticipating blowback to a measure that he was strongly warned against by Republican lawmakers and members of his own administration, Mr. Trump immediately explained that his predecessors had made national emergency declarations for “far less important things in some cases.

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