This week has seen the annual Washington DC event that is
the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC). Those out there on the
right have in the past been addressed by the likes of Ronald Reagan, “Dubya” Bush, “Dick” Cheney, Newt Gingrich, Karl Rove and Mitt Romney. Sadly, the
quality of orator has declined to the extent that, this year, they had to rope
in Donald Trump.
Donald, where's yer hairspray?
The king of the comb-over shared
with his audience his more significant insights: his merchandise was going
down a storm in China. “My apartments, my
ties, they love me ... I’ve got the largest bank in the world from China –
Chinese bank – largest in the world, biggest bank in China, is my tenant”.
But the Chinese Government did not show sufficient respect for the USA, no Sir!
“China, which I’ve
been talking about for the last five years, yesterday – right in our face –
they just devalued our currency ... What they’re really saying is, ‘We’re
really ripping you big league. Nobody’s ever done it better than us, but now
we’re going to really do it again ... They have no respect for our leader and,
frankly, they have no respect any longer for our great country”.
What was
described by MediaIte as “an
extemporaneous rant” was a rambling and often barely coherent affair mainly
because Trump eschewed an autocue, a device without which his oratory veers off
the fairway and into the deepest sand trap in short order. But the anti-Chinese
broadside was as nothing compared to the gaffe he made when comparing Barack
Obama with his predecessors.
Telling how badly the Prez was supposedly doing, Trump
asserted that “I think by next month, we
will have surpassed the late, great Jimmy Carter”. The 39th President of
the United States is still very much alive. ABC
News picked up the gaffe, as did Mail
Online. But, despite a verbatim report of the speech, Breitbart somehow
managed not to flag the remark as a howler.
Instead, readers
were told that Trump had made a “rousing”
speech: “Donald Trump’s CPAC Speech: Hits
Obama, The Chinese, Immigration And Putin”. No mention that Trump had
claimed unemployment in the States was over 21% when the official figure shows
it below 7%. No mention of the claim that the estimated 11 million in the USA
illegally would all vote Democrat.
“Every one of those
votes goes to the Democrats.... you will not get any of those votes no matter
what you do, no matter how nice you are, no matter how soft you are” Trump
told his audience. But Breitbart was not for telling its readers. That is the
kind of lazy and slanted reporting that the site majors in. And that is why you
should tread carefully before treating any of its content as reliable.
That is because reliable
is what the Breitbart sites are not.
1 comment:
We had to look up Autocue, which turns out to be the going British terminology for a teleprompter. You may not be aware that Trump and his ilk have been trying to live without these machines ever since someone noticed in 2009 that President Obama was using one. Of course, all presidents since Reagan have used them, but it did not matter: the American right wing suddenly decided that use of a teleprompter proved this president was secretly stupid and unable to talk without the aid of a script. This led to some visual debacles, such as the time that Sarah Palin was videotaped reading her cracks about Obama's teleprompter...from a teleprompter. The result is that anyone who wants to make fun of Obama's Autocue must do without one themselves, as Mr. Trump has.
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