Brexit, Coronavirus, and a Teleprompter II

As I was saying ... the silliness of the Oval Office speech became obvious in stages. He didn't mean "cargo." He didn't mean to suggest that Americans abroad wouldn't be able to fly home. He didn't even mean to exclude the United Kingdom. The UK and the Republic of Ireland were both explicitly included within a couple of days.

So supporting Brexit had never had anything to do with it. Or not much.

It was a disaster of a speech, reminding me of an old comedy bit about a cheese shop.

"Not much of a cheese shop, is it?"

"It's the finest in the district, sir."

"Explain the logic behind that conclusion."

"It's so clean."

"It's certainly uncontaminated by cheese."

Anyway: through much of the speech Trump appeared to be having trouble reading the words on the teleprompter. Yet he persisted, which resulted in some odd inflections.

My guess is that some of the simple looniness of the speech came at patches where Trump could not help but riff. He was almost certainly riffing, going off text, when he said, "Anything coming from Europe to the United States is what we are discussing."

That is not a line a professional "ghost" would have written even if it were actually the policy the POTUS was trying to announce.

Ah, for the professional speechwriters. Among all the sorts of expertise to which our leaders used to attend, all now discarded ... I miss that one the most.

Peace out.

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