The Mt. Rushmore speech

Maybe it will be vaguely remembered as the worst Independence Day speech in American history. I’m betting it will be known as the “toe-tally-terry-tism” speech.

It was not simply his slurred speech (Trump also mangled the pronunciation of Ulysses Grant, as if he had never seen in print the first name of the Union general who clobbered the Confederate generals Trump still tries to venerate) that conveyed the impression there is something just not right with the 45th president. It was not merely Trump’s sweaty, oddly colored pallor; his squinting to read the teleprompter; or the uneven pacing of his reading, which at times threatened (promised?) to grind to a halt. No, it was the darkly aggressive and fascistic substance of his speech: positing that his enemies want to destroy America and eradicate its history.

This was a bookend (and, one hopes, the final chapter) speech to the “carnage” inauguration speech, which former president George W. Bush aptly called “some weird s---.” This one was even weirder.

[...]

They want to silence us, but we will not be silenced.” I actually have no idea what he is talking about. It is all froth, anger and white resentment at this point. His enemies are other Americans; his understanding of American greatness is utterly defective. Reform, progress and inclusion are threats to his base, oozing with white grievance.

Somehow, in Trump’s view, the people who want to stop the veneration of traitorous white nationalists who took up arms against the United States harbor a “radical view of American history [that] is a web of lies.” [...] He had nothing to say about the victims of a pandemic he ignored and then mishandled.

[...]

This surely was not designed to win back voters he desperately needs in November.

  WaPo

He doesn't think he lost them.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.