Civility takes a holiday
“Golden beaches of California”? This was the lamest, sappiest, most intentionally tear-jerking SOTU ever. Please fire your speechwriter.”
— An Ann Coulter tweet following last week’s State of the Union speech
President Trump’s 82-minute, 5,250-word State of the Union speech didn’t please everybody.
It was very popular for people who don’t care that when he walks into a room, the truth leaves it.
Otherwise, aside from the occasional pronouncements about the need for “unity,” the speech was pure Donald.
Long on lies, short on real substance.
According to Trump, the American economy is “far and away the hottest economy anywhere in the world.”
No, it’s not.
The economies of Latvia, Poland, China, India, and Greece are experiencing more growth than the United States.
I could stop there and claim that’s the only lie he told to Congress and the rest of the world, but I’m not.
I’m just getting’ started.
Try this one on for size.
Trump claimed that “We have created 5.3 million new jobs.”
No, “we” haven’t.
According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, there’ve only been 4.9 million jobs created since Trump took office.
You could easily call such lies exaggerations, except he’s obviously been told that he’s not telling the truth about the actual number.
He continues to overstate it, anyway.
He did exaggerate the number of manufacturing jobs that have been created since he took office – “600,000 manufacturing jobs,” he boasted.
For the record, 454,000 manufacturing jobs is the correct number.
Not only did he exaggerate that number, he scaled to new lying heights with his falsehood that “almost everyone” said his number of increased manufacturing jobs would be “impossible.”
Shush! Don’t tell him that an 454,000 increase in new manufacturing jobs matched what happened several times during the Obama administration. And, it’s much lower than when Bill Clinton was in office.
He didn’t tell all lies during that speech.
He did tell the truth about one thing: “Exactly one century after the Congress passed the Constitutional amendment giving women the right to vote, we also have more women serving in the Congress than ever before.”
That was a nice touch.
The large contingent of Democratic women, all dressed in white, stood, cheered and led the chants of “USA.”
Ironically, many of the newest Democratic women in Congress had run against Trump’s policies to get elected.
And there he was praising them.
It couldn’t get any better than that.
“But we must reject the politics of revenge, resistance, and retribution – and embrace the boundless potential of cooperation, compromise, and the common good,” he said with rare alliteration (for him), as he ignited another lengthy standing ovation.
It’s the kind of saccharine line that only a speechwriter would write and have Ann Coulter call for his termination.
She knows, as well as the rest of us, that Trump’s strong suit is in insulting Democrats and telling lies.
He spent a lot of time during that speech doing the latter.
He called the current situation on the southern border “an urgent national crisis.”
Illegal crossings on the southern border have declined for two decades.
The number of illegal immigrants who were apprehended trying to get into the country from Mexico in 2017 – were at their lowest point since 1971.
Trump’s biggest State of the Union fib caused an uproar down in Texas.
He falsely claimed that since the border wall was built near El Paso, that transformed it from having high rates of violent crime to “one of our safest cities.”
El Paso’s Sheriff, Richard Wiles, took more than a little umbrage with that.
“El Paso was a safe city long before any wall was built. President Trump continues to give a false narrative about a great city that truly represents what this great nation is all about,” the Sheriff said.
Trump is expected to hold a campaign speech in El Paso today.
If that Sheriff confronts him about his claim that the border wall caused crime to plummet, we know Trump’s response will be, “I NEVER SAID THAT!”
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.