Fireside Chat


cjones11052019

I find it amusing that after the impeachment inquiry vote, Republicans accused Democrats of being partisan…after every. single. Republican. voted against it. That just went right over their heads. Republican Steve Scalise said it was a “Soviet-style” investigation, never mind that these “Soviet-style” rules were written by Republicans.

Despite all Republicans checking their consciences at the door and finding nothing wrong with a president asking a foreign government to go after a political opponent and help his reelection, Donald Trump is still freaking out. He continues to say the phone call, which he sometimes refers to as a “letter,” was “perfect.” It wasn’t even perfect corruption because they didn’t hide it well enough.

Trump has told us that we have the complete “transcript,” despite the disclaimer at the top of the “transcript” explaining it’s not complete, or even a transcript. It’s a summary.

Now, Donald Trump is thinking about taking a page from a previous president and selling the “transcript” to the public himself. He’s considering reading it aloud in a “fireside chat.” OK. I’m curious.

The first thing I’m curious about is Trump reading aloud. I’ve heard him read aloud before. It’s cringeworthy. It’s like in elementary school when the entire class took turns reading a story aloud, and they each got different pages or paragraphs. And if you were one of the kids who read well and was impatient, it was aggravating listening to someone read something you had already read and could have read 20 more times during the length of time it took your classmate to read it once. Donald Trump is not the impatient kid.

That’s the second thing I’m curious about. Will Trump read the entire transcript and not just the ten-page summary? Even if he only tackles the ten pages, can America sit through Trump mangling it with his poor reading ability?

Trump is copying Franklin Delano Roosevelt, who delivered the chats on radio between 1933 and 1944. He used radio to kill rumors, explain policies, and comfort and reassure America during times of the Great Depression and World War II. There are differences here. Roosevelt was loved by the nation. Trump can’t go to a baseball game without people chanting “lock him up.” Roosevelt could read and he wrote very well. He was a great orator and his speeches are still quoted. Donald Trump is barely literate. Roosevelt was also comforting. Donald Trump is a screaming race-baiter. Basically, Roosevelt was a leader America wanted four times. Donald Trump is America’s asshole.

Roosevelt didn’t use the fireside chats to defend corruption. He also didn’t use them to only talk about himself. Donald Trump doesn’t want to conduct a fireside chat to talk to America about America. Donald Trump wants to talk to America about Donald Trump. Trump’s only agenda as president has been Donald Trump.

I think Trump is better off sticking to his hate rallies where he flails around without a script. Nobody there expects him to read or be comforting, and they eat up everything he says.

I would totally expect Donald Trump to conduct a fireside chat with a flamethrower.

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19 thoughts on “Fireside Chat”

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  1. I HOPE – really HOPE – he does this. And then LTC Vindman comes on any TV show that carries this ‘fireside chat’ (can one even IMAGINE chatting with drumpf? Does he know how??) and inserts the missing/changed words, as he claims has happened.

    I think it’d be most likely to go like this . . .

    “And if you were one of the kids who read well and was impatient, . . .”
    I was one o’ those kids, and now I’m one o’ those adults who won’t even listen to audiobooks ’cause the narrator is way. too. slow.

    Liked by 3 people

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    2. Andrea –

      Watching DT read aloud is like being stuck in traffic on the other direction of the freeway, crawling past a terrible car wreck you can neither help alleviate or escape. If he ever admitted to dyslexia I’d actually respect him in that one thing but – oh, you call all finish that sentence for yourselves.

      Many people become gleeful whenever The Big Orange – not to insult citrus, which I love -decides if he just told us what he was doing, all all the obstacles against him would magically disappear. (You, me, and an odd one or so hundred million others.) Here’s Don Lemon, trying to report Trump’s bright idea with a straight newscaster’s face. At about 0:0:50 he gives up trying, as his imagination conjures up how much good such a Chat would do for Trump’s defenses. The slow spread of Mephistophelian glee across his features is infectious.

      https://edition.cnn.com/videos/politics/2019/11/01/don-lemon-trump-fireside-chat-ukraine-call-transcript-ctn-vpx.cnn

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      1. Virginia: I’m trying to access this, but my computer and CNN videos do NOT play well (pun intended) together, so it may take a while. Interesting to see that he, too, thinks this plan – such as it is – should go forward.

        Luckily, with no TV, I won’t watch, but I WILL read whatever commentators and political cartoonists write about it.

        Thanks for tip about Lemon – I’d stopped reading news a few days ago – depression doesn’t NEED more to be depressed about – but I’ll definitely keep trying this, if only for a sense of validation.

        Liked by 1 person

      2. Easier to see on YouTube – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Um-JV5fzbPE
        (NOT A TRANSCRIPT; A MEMO!!!)
        This one’s good, too –
        https://www.cnn.com/videos/politics/2019/11/01/cuomo-lemon-handoff-trump-fireside-chat-ukraine-call-transcript-ctn-vpx.cnn

        My question to Clay is – do you MIND that we discuss this, add videos and book recommendations? I hope not – sometimes this places is the only one that keeps me sane! But if you’d rather we didn’t, you gotta tell us ‘-)

        Liked by 1 person

    3. Andrea,
      Good point about needing Clay’s approval before sending readers off to different sites. Clay, I apologize for my thoughtlessness and didn’t intend to be rude. I’ll be more careful in future.

      Liked by 1 person

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      1. On a non-political list I’m on (CIDU – Comics I don’t understand), thread drift is common and is, in fact, encouraged. I then forget, when I change lists, that this is not an off-the-top-of-my-head, want-to-share-everything list. I do, however, love information shared by others – and being a former library staff, I love to share information, forgetting that, at time, others don’t necessarily want to receive it.

        Liked by 2 people

      1. Perhaps; or perhaps ’cause I’ve called her Melanomia for several years now.

        Last night, I read the recently-published book, ‘Yes We Did: Photos and Behind-the-Scenes Stories Celebrating Our First African American President’ by Lawrence Jackson and Barack Obama, and I highly recommend it, altho it will probably make you sad to realize how much we’ve lost in only 3.5 years.

        I bought and highly recommend the book, ‘Shade: A Tale of Two Presidents’, by Pete Souza. Both Jackson and Souza were WH photographers during PRESIDENT Obama’s terms. The photos in both books are – to me, anyway – heartbreaking, but necessary.

        Liked by 1 person

  5. Well, I just read on the PolticusUSA Newsletter that this ‘plan’ is, as usual, a stunt and a lie and he won’t be reading anything – memo (some of which is now verified as having been made up), transcript, laundry list . . . nada. I was REALLY looking forward to this, too.

    And I want to know WHY there is no actual recording available, a la Nixon. If the NSC can tap into my phone, emails, etc., why not those of the WH. Or is what they stuck in the supersecret computer the recording?

    Stay tuned . . .

    Liked by 2 people

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  7. Anyone remember Rep. Francis Rooney, R-Fla? He had suggested to actually look at the facts of the investigation just to see what they were, and was rewarded by being thrown out of the Republican party. THAT is why not one House Republican voted for the impeachment inquiry. Even suggesting to read the evidence will torpedo your career in Trump’s party.

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