Clap on. Clap off. The Clapper
The man sure knows how to love himself.
Last week’s State of the Union message, with the staid trappings of American government on full view, Donald Trump still managed to perform a one man show.
He applauded himself into a near frenzy.
His speech contained 120 carefully scripted applause lines.
He punctuated just about every one of them with his own self-congratulatory handclaps.
It got so annoying to many people in the TV audience, that Twitter erupted with catcalls.
In fact, the front page of the New York Daily News the next morning featured a clapping Trump, and the headline: “WHAT A LOAD OF CLAP. Trump praises himself, touts ‘unity’ while bashing immigrants.”
Vice News even strung together a video of the times Trump applauded himself. He spent a full five minutes clapping.
That’s the least of the criticism of the 80-minute speech that was more notable for the number of false and misleading statements, than for the times he slammed his hands together.
Fact-checkers had a field day.
“We enacted the biggest tax cuts and reform in American history,” Trump announced.
According to the non-partisan Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, there’ve been seven tax cuts that were bigger than the one he signed into law in late December.
Of course, Trump clapped; Republicans jumped to their feet; but Democrats rolled their eyes when they heard the oft-repeated fiction about the size of those tax cuts.
“Since the election, we have created 2.4 million new jobs, including 200,000 new jobs in manufacturing alone. After years of wage stagnation, we are finally seeing rising wages,” was Trump’s set-up for another round of applause.
The job gains during Barack Obama’s final 14 months in office, were higher – at 2.7 million jobs. And more dishonest, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, wages haven’t been completely stagnant. They’ve been slowly rising for years.
My favorite oft-repeated Trump distortion is his claim that, “African-American unemployment stands at the lowest rate ever recorded.”
That’s true. But the president is taking a bow for something for which he had little to do.
The African-American jobless rate had already dropped from 16.8% in March of 2010, to 7.8% the day he took office. It’s only dropped 1% (to 6.8%) since then.
Thanks, Obama.
We expect State of the Union speeches to be far more pomp than circumstance.
We don’t expect them to be quite so pompous.
So much so, that up in the gallery, even Melania Trump appeared to be bored by the whole thing.
Or, one might wonder if their marriage has been a little “Stormy” lately. (If you catch my drift)
Of course, Donnie The Dealmaker is the self-proclaimed master of the art of the deal.
He ran for president with bold boasts about his ability to forge trade deals out of thin air.
There’s no better time than a State of the Union message to showcase his deal-making successes.
“The era of economic surrender is totally over. From now on, we expect trading relationships to be fair. And very importantly, reciprocal,” he said before he stepped back and gave himself another round of applause.
Thing is, in 2017 the nation’s trade deficit didn’t decrease. It increased by 12 percent over the previous year.
But he saved some of his best applause-getters for his ever-changing stances on immigration.
Remember he was against immigrants, before he was for immigrants. But that was before he was against immigrants…
“Under the current broken system, a single immigrant can bring in virtually unlimited numbers of distant relatives,” he said.
That’s an uncarefully crafted lie.
Current immigration practices don’t allow legal immigrants to sponsor distant relatives for residency.
Nor, as he added, are green cards handed out “randomly, without any regard for skill, merit or the safety of our people.”
The diversity visa program is far more complicated than that.
Before he makes those kinds of statements, Mr. Trump should be forced to raise one of his hands.
After all, what is the sound of one hand clapping?
Edward A. Owens is a multi-Emmy Award winner, former reporter and anchor for Entertainment Tonight and 20-year TV news veteran. E-mail him at freedoms@bellatlantic.net.