President Donald Trump’s big Fourth of July celebration at the National Mall has come and gone, but not without having first produced a conventionally Trump-ian, outlandish moment. Trump has now blamed a faulty teleprompter for standing in front of those assembled and the untold masses watching via video feeds and proudly declaring that during the Revolutionary War, the forces of what would eventually become the United States “took over airports.” It should go without saying that there were no airplanes let alone airports during the time that the British colonies in North America obtained their independence, more than a hundred years before the first flight. It’s also an open question of whether or not Trump was paying any attention to what he was saying at all since the explanation is now that he improvised in the face of a failing teleprompter by referring to… the airports of the Revolutionary War.
Still, he proudly told reporters of the teleprompter:
‘It kept going on and at the end it just went out. It went kaput. That’s not a good feeling when you’re standing in front of millions and millions of people. I guess the rain knocked out the teleprompter. I knew the speech very well so I was able to do it without a teleprompter. And it was actually hard to look at anyway because of the rain.’
Ironically, Trump has criticized those on the opposite side of the political spectrum from him for using teleprompters in the past. When deriding President Barack Obama for using teleprompters became a big thing in right-wing circles, Trump chimed in on Twitter with a question of why Obama “always [had] to rely on teleprompters.” On another occasion, he whined about the “bad performance by Crooked Hillary Clinton,” who he claimed was “reading poorly from the teleprompter” and “doesn’t even look presidential!” It looks like Trump has become a self-fulfilling prophecy at this point. If he’s concerned about the stress of delivering remarks that will be viewed by millions upon millions of people, maybe he shouldn’t have applied for this job.
The speech flub isn’t the only issue associated with his egocentric Fourth of July celebration. Normally, the president does not engage in these annual public D.C. gatherings, but Trump didn’t care about politicizing the nation’s independence day festivities with a price tag for taxpayers of millions upon millions of dollars. Controversially, Trump even brought in tanks and had a military plane flyover, trying to turn U.S. military might into a prop to drag out for show.
He claims to be a defender of the respect of the military or something, but when he not just pulls off stunts like this but simultaneously threatens to send Americans into harm’s way through war with an adversary like Iran, his niceties poof into nothingness.
Dealing with the current president’s bumbled handling of key national security issues demonstrated by him resorting to lauding armies from hundreds of years ago for storming airports will definitely be on the table for whoever comes into the White House after him.
Featured Image via screenshot
