When it comes to the recognition of the importance of the Black vote, Trump removes his dunce cap. A significant portion of his nearly 80-minute State of the Union address Tuesday night was given to wooing Black voters, featuring them in shout-outs that often brought standing ovations from the lawmakers.
Trump’s most recent embrace of Black America began at the Super Bowl where 63-year-old Alice Marie-Johnson was the centerpiece in a 30-second, $5.6 million ad. Johnson was released two years ago after serving 21 years from a conviction of possession of a controlled substance, a release that was largely led by Kim Kardashian West. But like so much of his speech to Congress, Trump took the credit for everything good and blamed the previous administration for everything bad.
The speech, according to Speaker Nancy Pelosi, was a “manifesto of mistruths,” or a litany of lies. When he wasn’t courting Black voters, Trump was on stage, mixing his pitch with hyperbole, hypocrisy and anything but the impeachment. There was a poignant moment from the past when he saluted Charles McGee, the 100-year-old former Tuskegee Airman, whom he had earlier promoted to brigadier general. Seated next to McGee was Iain Lanphier, his 13-year-old great-grandson who was commended for his completion of a Black Aerospace program. Army veteran Tony Rankins was asked to stand while Trump recounted how the former drug addict had reformed his life and was working in an “opportunity zone.”
Trump, it could be said, was working in an opportunity zone himself, noting the presence of Venezuelan opposition leader Juan Guaido and having his wife hang a Presidential Medal of Freedom around the neck of cancer stricken Rush Limbaugh. He also used that moment to announce an opportunity scholarship to Janiyah Davis, the daughter of a single mother. This was once again a chance for him to promote the Education Freedom Scholarships and Opportunity Act and appeal to the nation’s minorities.
Besides an obvious overture to Black voters, a bigger nod went to the white voters in key battleground states such as Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania that played a key role in his victory four years ago. Much of that appeal was centered on his claims, no boasts, that the nation’s economy was doing better than ever, or the “best ever,” to cite his estimate.
There is no need here to discuss two things that are certain: Trump’s mendacity and his acquittal on Wednesday. Like all of his lies, his acquittal will be another arrow in his quiver as he ramps up his re-election campaign that should get a boost from the debacle that occurred during the Iowa caucuses.
Trump’s SOTU was just a dress rehearsal, a sample of what will be aired and delivered again in the coming months. At the moment there seems to be no clear frontrunner among the Democratic hopefuls and this, too, will be fodder for the Trump team.
As Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer noted in her response to the SOTU, the economy is doing well but it’s hardly the “blue collar boom” he claimed. “So when the President says the economy is strong,” she said, “my question is strong for whom? Strong for the wealthy, who are reaping the rewards from the tax cuts they don’t need?”
At the end of his speech, viewers were given visual commentary on Trump’s words when Pelosi, standing behind, ripped them in half. That was her way of getting back at him for snubbing her handshake at the beginning of the evening. “It was the courteous thing to do, considering the alternatives,” she said when asked about the action. “It was such a dirty speech.”
After all was said and done, it was another bizarre rendezvous with Trump who continues to be the Mad Hatter with no end to his bamboozling and attempts to hoodwink the nation.