Let us tear through these Trumpland evocations, the business pitches of this show and publicity act that was the first address by the President to a joint sitting of the US Congress. There were the common themes; there were the contradictory messages; and there was plain, traditional nonsense. In the undergrowth were olive branches being offered (“The time for trivial fights is behind us”), platitudes, and a few incontestable points.
While he swayed between themes like a confused, erratic metronome, a few could be gathered from Donald J. Trump’s speech. For one, he kept insisting that he was placing the US people at the centre of his policies, the idea “that America must put its own citizens first, because only then can we truly make America great again.”
There were the populist markers and scratchings. He was intent, for instance, on draining “the swamp of government corruption by imposing a 5-year ban on lobbying by executive branch officials and a lifetime ban on becoming lobbyists for a foreign government.” (What of friendlies?) This aspiration has been neutered somewhat by his own assumption of power in the White House, but his base hardly cared.
Juicier than ever, immigration was repeatedly harked upon. Pleas “for immigration enforcement,” he claimed, had been heard. (So loudly, in fact, that traditional, nondescript Anglos like the Australian children’s writer Mem Fox are being bailed up in sobbing horror at US…