THE SHAMELESS EXPEDIENCY OF PRESIDENT TRUMP’S ADDRESS TO CONGRESS
By Amy Davidson March 1, 2017
http://www.newyorker.com/news/amy-davidson/the-shameless-expediency-of-president-trumps-address-to-congress?mbid=nl_TNY%20Template%20-%20With%20Photo%20(140)&CNDID=48616832&spMailingID=10533145&spUserID=MTc4Mjk3NjQ3NjIxS0&spJobID=1120075446&spReportId=MTEyMDA3NTQ0NgS2
The Shameless Expediency of President Trump’s Address to Congress 1
President Donald Trump, in his first speech to a joint session of Congress.
PHOTOGRAPH BY JIM LO SCALZO / EPA / ANADOLU AGENCY / GETTY
In the first sentence of President Trump’s joint address to Congress, on Tuesday night, he noted that it was, at least for a few more hours, Black History Month, which he said was a reminder of the fight for civil rights and “the work that still remains to be done.” In the second sentence, he mentioned the recent threats against Jewish community centers and the vandalism of cemeteries, as well as what he referred to only as “last week’s shooting in Kansas City,” saying that they “remind us that while we may be a nation divided on policies, we are a country that stands united in condemning hate and evil in all of its very ugly forms.” It was, in the most basic sense, proper and welcome for the President to acknowledge such crimes. He and his speechwriters might have been counting on observers being grateful that he had brushed against the bottom rung of decent gestures, with the vague sense that something Presidential had been said. But it is worth pausing at that opening and reflecting on its political utility, its incongruity, its evasiveness, and, ultimately, its shamelessness—qualities that characterized the address as a whole. Each instance in those first sentences has a remarkable context; each, in its way, poses questions about what Trump needs to be reminded of, what he wants Americans to pretend never happened, and our own capacity to play make-believe when it comes to his Presidency.
Black History Month had effectively ended, for this Administration, not with the calendar turning to March but with an ahistorical statement by Betsy DeVos, the Secretary of Education, in which she described historically black colleges and universities, founded in the decades when African-Americans were legally barred from many institutions of higher learning, as “pioneers of higher education.” They had, she said, taken it “upon themselves to provide the solution,” as if the communities around H.B.C.U.s should not have also demanded that the government act to end segregation. It read like a missive from an alternate history in which Plessy v. Ferguson, the ruling from 1896, in which the Supreme Court declared itself satisfied with “separate but equal,” was still celebrated as the law of the land. (Plessy was finally overturned, in Brown v. Board of Education, more than sixty years ago.)
As to the attacks on Jewish sites across America, the problem isn’t that Trump has been oblivious but that, when he responds to questions about them, he has, more than once, said that some number of them were carried out by his political opponents to discredit him—that the attacks were not anti-Semitic but anti-Trump. (His formulation on Tuesday night, which was not specific about a motive, did not back away from that position.) The speech to Congress was the first time that he had mentioned the Kansas attack, which is why his vagueness about it was so striking. A gunman who, according to witnesses, shouted, “Get out of my country!” had shot two Indian engineers, employed by a local company, in a bar crowded with people who had gathered to watch a University of Kansas basketball game. One of them, a thirty-two-year-old man named Srinivas Kuchibhotla, was killed; the other, Alok Madasani, was wounded. The gunman then shot another patron, Ian Grillot, after Grillot tried, heroically, to tackle him, thinking that the man had expended every bullet in his gun.
A marketer as skilled as Trump could, indeed, have turned that story into one about how Americans like Grillot were “united in condemning hate and evil in all of its very ugly forms.” He might have used a word like bigotry; he might even have spoken firmly to his more vehement followers in a way that provoked actual hard reflection. That is not too much to ask, even, or especially, of Trump: he is the President. Instead, like a third grader who has finished a workbook page on Martin Luther King, Jr., he moved on, an obligation disposed of. A few minutes later, he found a different historical marker, one that he proposed as the turning point that will define America when, nine years from now, it reaches the two-hundred-and-fiftieth anniversary of its Declaration of Independence: the moment, in 2016, when “the earth shifted beneath our feet” at the advent of Trump. A “rebellion” became “a loud chorus” and then, with tens of millions of voters, “an earthquake.” Here, he said, one discovered what really brought America together: “They were all united by one very simple, but crucial, demand: that America must put its own citizens first, because only then can we truly make America great again.”
Earlier in the day, in meetings with news anchors, Trump had suggested that he might be open to some manner of comprehensive immigration reform and even a path to legalization for people who are already here. It is a good bet that this is an illusion. In his address, he spoke about reform mostly in terms of exclusion—moving toward a “merit-based” system rather than the one currently in place, which is focussed on families. He said that immigrants coming to America now were, in his view, too poor. With fewer, richer immigrants, their families, too, would be more likely to enter the middle class, he said, “and they will do it quickly, and they will be very, very happy, indeed.”
In contrast, Trump said, the current system was one of “lawless chaos.” The way to restore “integrity and the rule of law” at America’s southern border was with a wall and with measures he had introduced to remove the “bad ones” already in the United States. This, again, exhibits a certain willingness to pretend that reality is other than it is—a favorite Trump indulgence—in this case by ignoring the far broader parameters that he has set for deportations. Last night, his emphasis was on danger, represented, first, by foreign criminals and terrorists.
In speaking of the actions he is taking, Trump also elided the legal problems of his executive-order travel ban. “It is not compassionate but reckless to allow uncontrolled entry from places where proper vetting cannot occur,” he said. Yet “uncontrolled entry” is not the system we have now, particularly in terms of refugees. When Trump spoke of how he wanted to screen these immigrants, he said, “Those given the high honor of admission to the United States should support this country and love its people and its values.” It wasn’t enough for immigrants to be prosperous: they also had to be affectionate. He has spoken in these terms before, in questioning the values that Muslim immigrants bring to the country, and those that their children grow up with. (At one point, Trump said that America was in danger of becoming “a sanctuary for extremism”—a characterization that one might already apply to the White House.) A promised substitute for the executive order, and a look at what its love trial—or religious test—might be, is overdue.
There were, as there tend to be in Trump speeches, inaccuracies and double talk, about economic numbers and about what, exactly, he might be willing to salvage from the Affordable Care Act (“access,” in some cases, rather than a guarantee of coverage). Paul Ryan, the Speaker of the House, appeared satisfied and fond of the President, for the most part; Democrats expressed their discontent with some pointed silences and, in the case of many of the women, outfits in suffragette white. Trump hasn’t changed, despite the fact that he showed he could mostly follow a teleprompter. He has done that before, just as he has, as he did last night, shown that he knows how to work a crowd.
Notably, he spoke directly to Jamiel Shaw, Sr., the father of a teen-age son who was killed by someone undocumented. Trump said that he and Shaw, who appeared moved, had become friends, and Trump’s adept management of such moments was one reason that the speech, despite a murky, threat-filled policy message, came across as more successful than some of his rhetorical flights, when he has seemed to see nothing but himself standing as a light in the American darkness. This was also true in the speech’s most dramatic moment, when Trump addressed Carryn Owens, the widow of Senior Chief William (Ryan) Owens, a Navy seal. Owens was killed in an operation in Yemen that Trump had authorized, and which appears to have gone very badly, with probable civilian deaths, the alienation of the Yemeni public, and exaggerations about the intelligence gained. Trump had previously tried to blame his generals for the errors, and attacked Senator John McCain for questioning the raid. (Owens’s father has also asked for an investigation.) But last night Trump proclaimed the mission a success, citing Secretary of Defense James Mattis, who, as Trump vaguely seemed to remember, is more trusted than he is on military questions. There was a long standing ovation; Carryn Owens seemed overcome, and gestured as if she were beckoning her husband to see what she saw. Trump, looking satisfied, seemed to refer to the amount of time that the applause had lasted when he said, “Ryan is looking down right now. You know that. And he’s very happy, because I think he just broke a record.” With that last reference to the way measures of popularity can make a person happy, Trump did seem to remember who he was. And so might the rest of us.
Amy Davidson is a New Yorker staff writer. She is a regular Comment contributor for the magazine and writes a Web column, in which she covers war, sports, and everything in between. More
