During his Saturday stand-up set at The Laff Shack in Tulsa, Donald Trump delivered a free-form riff of more than 15 minutes, re-enacting the widely-circulated video showing him tentatively walking down a ramp at West Point on the previous Saturday, June 13.
Trump defended himself in a tweet later that day:
The ramp that I descended after my West Point Commencement speech was very long & steep, had no handrail and, most importantly, was very slippery. The last thing I was going to do is "fall" for the Fake News to have fun with. Final ten feet I ran down to level ground. Momentum!There was no handrail. He's right about that.
But "very long" ... "steep" ... "very slippery" ... "Final ten feet I ran"?
You be the judge:
Mr. Thin Skin could not let it go, of course. He'll likely still be making excuses for it in August. At one point last Saturday, while babbling to a crowd of more thanTrump descended a ramp extremely carefully at the end of his West Point speech today pic.twitter.com/uMG3KyB1V1— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) June 13, 2020
By itself, the video is no big deal. Trump celebrated his 74th birthday the next day. He made his way down that
... because Trump spends so much time insulting others while also insisting that he is literally incapable of ever making a mistake, as well as being handsome and healthy and smart, well, he leaves himself wide open to ridicule. A person should expect to catch some flak when he calls other people 'idiots" and then suggests drinking bleach to ward off a virus. That person should take it as well as he gives it out.
Trump began at the 22:40 mark with this new track slotted early into his Greatest Hits set. He wrapped it up at 37:54. That's fifteen minutes, fourteen seconds, complete with voice impersonations. CNN pointed out that by word count, Trump's Ramp Riff was six times longer than Abraham Lincoln's Gettysburg Address. (Or, as I sometimes like to call him, "Honest Abe".)
You are so lucky I'm president, that's all I can tell you.Ted Glick (the co-founder and national coordinator of the National Campaign to Impeach Nixon in 1973-74 and the current national campaign coordinator of the Chesapeake Climate Action Network) stated:
[USA! USA! USA! USA!]
People have come up to me, say, "How do you take it?" I say, "Do I have a choice? Do I have a choice?" We deal with a lot of bad people, but we're winning. And every once in a while, I'll have one of these days where I'm hit left and right, left and right, like even this great event. If you could have seen outside or if you could have heard the reports, the reports, "Oh, it's COVID." It's this again. By the way, it's a disease without question, has more names than any disease in history. I can name, "Kung flu." I can name, 19 different versions of names. Many call it a virus, which it is. Many call it a flu, what difference? I think we have 19 or 20 versions of the name. But they say to me, "Where do you get the energy?" I say, "I don't have a choice. I don't have a choice." It was interesting, to show you how fake they are, you might've seen it. So last week they called me and they say, "Sir, West Point, West Point, we're ready." I said, "Oh, that's right. I have to make the commencement speech at West Point."
You know, they delayed it for six weeks because of COVID. So they delayed it and I went there. 1,106 cadets were graduated and beautiful. Beautiful [inaudible]. Just to show you how bad the fake news is, so they say to me, "Sir, we're ready to go." I say, "Let's go." This is after saying hello to a lot of cadets, inspecting little areas of a building, that was very exciting. Actually, it's beautiful, very old. Studied a lot of our great generals, some of our presidents that went there. West Point is beautiful, right on the Hudson River. But after an hour, the general that runs it is a fantastic guy. After an hour, we land, we do some more inspections and they say, "Sir, are you ready? Yes, I am." So we walked like the equivalent of about three blocks, which is fine. We go onstage, which is fine. They make speeches, then I make a speech that lasted a long time. I don't know, maybe 45 minutes, maybe longer, I don't know but a long time. The sun is pouring down on me, okay.
But they said to me before the speech, "Sir, would you like to salute each cadet, each single cadet? Or maybe there'll be in groups of two. Would you like to salute? Like this? Yes." Like this, almost 600 times. You know what that is? 600 times. Thank God they were in twos because let me tell you, you do that 600 times, you go home and you say it's like a workout without a weight, right? 600 times. So I did that. Then the incredible helicopters, brand new gorgeous helicopters, the Apaches and the other new ones that we just bought. Helicopters, the Apaches and the other new ones that we just bought. So they fly over and the kids throw the hats in the air, it's beautiful, it really is. It was a beautiful day and we're all finished. I was on the stage for hours, hours, sun, I came home, I had a nice tan, meaning I had a nice sunburn. The sun's [inaudible] like that, but I make this speech. I salute for probably an hour and a half, maybe more, but around that. Watch. If I'm off by two minutes they'll say, "He exaggerated. It was only an hour and 25 minutes. He exaggerated, he lied, he lied, he's a liar." These people are sick, the fake news.
So then I finish saluting my final salute, I said, "Thank goodness. Thank you very much." Think of it. So essentially almost 600 times. Now the general says, "Sir, are you ready?" I said, "I'm ready, General, where are we going now?" You have to understand I left early in the morning to get there. Now it's sort of late in the afternoon. A lot of these fakers were with us. So they know. He said, "Sir, we can now leave the stage." I said, "Great, General, let's go, I'll follow you," and he goes like this, "Right here, sir," and I walked off. The stage was higher than this one and the ramp was probably 10 yards long. I say, "General." Now you got to understand, I have the whole corps of cadets looking at me and I want them to love their president, I did this big thing. I love them, I love them. They're incredible, and they do. I said, "General, I've got myself a problem, General." Because I'm wearing leather bottom shoes which is good if you're walking on flat surfaces. It's not good for ramps and if I fall down, look at all those press back there, look at them. This was a steel ramp, you all saw it because everybody saw it. This was a steel ramp. It had no handrail, it was like an ice skating rink, and I said, "General, I have a problem," and he didn't understand that at first. I said, "There's no way." He understood, I just saluted almost 600 times. I just made a big speech. I sat for other speeches. I'm being baked. I'm being baked like a cake. I said, "General, there's no way I can make it down that ramp without falling on my ass, General. I have no railing."
It's true. So I said, "Is there like something else around?" "Sir, the ramp is ready to go." "Grab me, sir, grab me." I didn't really want to grab him. You know why? Because I said, "That will be a story, too." So now I have a choice. I can stay up there for another couple of hours and wait till I'm rescued or I can go down this really steep, really, really, really … It's an ice skating rink, it's brutal. So I said, "General, get ready because I may grab you so fast." Because I can't fall with the fake news watching. If I fall, if I fall, I remember when President Ford fell out of the plane, do you remember? I remember when another president, nice man, threw up in Japan, and they did slow motion replays. It's true, right? "I don't want that, General." Now he's standing there, big strong guy, and he's got these shoes but they're loaded with rubber on the bottom because I looked, the first thing I did, I looked at his shoes. Then I looked at mine. Very, very slippery. So I end up saying, "Okay, General, let's go. I will only grab you if I need you. That's not a good story. Falling would be a disaster. It turned out to be worse than anything. I would have been better off if I fell and slid down the damn ramp. Right? So what happens is I start the journey, inch by inch, right? I was really bent over, too. I didn't like that. I didn't like this picture. This picture, I'm sure, will be an ad by the fakers. So I was bent over, right? Bent over like this. Then we finally reached almost the end and the fake news, the most dishonest human beings, they cut it off. You know why? Because when I was 10 feet short, I said, "General, I'm sorry," and I ran down the rest, right? I looked very handsome. That was the only good. I wouldn't want to run down the whole thing because the fall there would be definitely bad. So I took these little steps, I ran down the last 10, and by the way their tape, take a look. In almost every instance, it ends just before I run, and they said, "Here was the number one trending story."
I call my wife, I said, "How good was that speech? I thought it was a …" Hey look, I will tell you when I make good ones and bad ones. Like so far tonight, I'm average, but we're having fun, we're having fun. So far tonight, but I call my wife and I said, "How good was it, darling?" She said, "You're trending number one." I said to our great first lady, I said, "Let me ask you a question. Was it that good of a speech that I'm trending number one? Because I felt it was really good." No, no, they don't even mention the speech. They mention the fact that you may have Parkinson's disease. It's true. It's true. It's true. They say there is something wrong with our president. I'll let you know if there's something wrong, okay? I'll let you know if there's something, I'll tell you what, there's something wrong with Biden, that I could tell you.
So then my wife said, "Well, it wasn't only the ramp. Did you have water?" I said, "Yeah. I was speaking for a long time. I didn't want to drink it, but I wanted to wet my lips a little bit." You're drinking, you're working hard up there with the sun pouring down on you. I love this location, the sun's like this. This way they save on lighting, right? That's why they did it, probably. So what happens is, I said, "What does it have to do with water?" They said, "You couldn't lift your hand up to your mouth with water." I said, "I just saluted 600 times like this, and this was before I saluted, so what's the problem?" She said, "Well, I know what you did. You had on a very good red tie that's sort of expensive." It's silk, because they look better. They have a better sheen to them. And I don't want to get water on the tie, and I don't want to drink much, so I lift it up, the water.
I see we have a little glass of water. Where the hell did this water come from? Where did it come from? I look down at my tie, because I've done it. I've taken water and it spills down onto your tie, doesn't look good for a long time and frankly, the tie is never the same. So I put it up to my lip and then I say, "[inaudible]", and they gave me another disease. They gave me another disease. Anyway, that's a long story, but here's the story. I have lived with more the ramp than the water but I have lived with the ramp and the water since I left West Point. Not one media group said I made a good speech or I made a great speech, but the kids loved it because they broke their barrier which wasn't good in terms of COVID but they broke their barrier and they wanted to shake hands, they wanted to … I don't want to tell anybody, but there were a couple of kids, they put out their hand, I actually shook their hand, okay? I actually shook them. Because they were excited. They were excited. They were with their president. They were excited. The most beautiful young people. Men, women, the most beautiful young people you've ever seen. So think of how you feel if you're me. I go there, how did I do? "Sir, that was a great speech." You know all my people, "Sir, that was one of your best, that was great." I said, "That's great, I agree, it was a good speech. I like that speech." They don't mention the speech, but they have been going down this ramp [inaudible]. It's so unfair. It really is. So unfair. They are among the most dishonest people anywhere on earth. They're bad people. Bad people.
If Trump was a stand-up comic instead of a President, this trivial, self-pitying story might become known as one of the best, long, stand-up comic routines of the year.Or it might become known as one of the best songs of the year:
***I set Trump’s insane Tulsa rally ramp speech to music.— Josh Radnor (@JoshRadnor) June 22, 2020
He is not a good lyricist. pic.twitter.com/DOG6LJXzLb
Trump's rethinking the size of his campaign rallies after Tulsa... pic.twitter.com/p3cXBSPp12— Eric Champnella (@champnella) June 22, 2020
2 comments:
Josh Radnor--very funny.
Oliver Sacks tells a story about Alzheimer patients laughing at one of Reagan's speeches because the words and his body language were so at odds. Here, the words put to music, it's clear the man is himself a demented maniac.
I remember that.
The story is retold in Paul Slansky's The Clothes Have No Emperor: A Chronicle of the American 80s (1989), a copy of which I happen to have!:
In his 1986 New York Times best-seller The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat, an examination of various bizarre neurological disorders, Oliver Sacks provided an account of oppositely impaired patients – aphasiacs, who can't understand spoken words but do take in information from extra-verbal cues, and tonal agnosiacs, who understand the actual words but miss their emotional content – watching a speech by President Reagan.
"It was the grimaces, the histrionisms, the false gestures and, above all, the false tones and cadences of the voice," wrote Sacks, which caused the word-deaf aphasiacs to laugh hysterically at the Great Communicator, while one agnosiac, relying entirely on the actual words, sat in stony silence, concluding that "he is not cogent ... his word-use is improper" and suspecting that "he has something to conceal."
"Here then," wrote Sacks, "was the paradox of the President's speech. We normals – aided, doubtless, by our wish to be fooled, were indeed well and truly fooled ... And so cunningly was deceptive word-use combined with deceptive tone, that only the brain-damaged remained intact, undeceived."
***
The Sacks story is on page 152, for April 6, 1986.
God, imagine how those people would react to Trump.
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