It’s far from clear that President Donald Trump has any idea what he’s doing in the position in which he’s supposed to be leading the United States and its resources. This Tuesday, speaking at a Pennsylvania petrochemical plant in what was supposed to be a normal, even “mundane” speech touting his administration’s energy policy agenda, he launched into yet another “I love trucks!” diatribe as if he was desperately trying to latch onto some kind of validation or grasp some fleeting personal rapport with the workers. Remember, he’s the president of the United States. That’s not the kind of thing you’d hope they’d be engaging in.
Eventually, he even “joked” about physically abusing the members of the media with one of the cranes that he “loved” so much! He told those who didn’t exactly seem consistently thrilled by his remarks, to put it one way:
‘I love cranes. I love trucks of all types. Even when I was a little boy at 4 years old my mother would say, ‘you love trucks.’ I do. I always loved trucks. I still do. Nothing changes. Sometimes, you know, you might become president, but nothing changes. I still love trucks, especially when I look at the largest crane in the world. That’s very cool.’
Check it out:
TRUMP: “I love cranes, I love trucks of all types. Even when I was a little boy at 4 years old, my mother would say, ‘You love trucks.’ I do.” pic.twitter.com/SnvjMDAhx8
— JM Rieger (@RiegerReport) August 13, 2019
What even hint of a shred of relevance does any of that have to what Trump was supposed to be talking about, let alone to what Trump is supposed to overall be doing as president of the United States? Why are we hearing him ramble on about childhood stories that it’s doubtful he even remembers, considering they’re from when he was four years old, and really — who remembers what happened when they were four years old? What on earth is happening? Why are these questions even something that could be asked?
After the above, and to an at first small burst of crowd laughter that might as well have been from nerves, Trump added of the crane, making hand gestures in an attempt at pretending to run it as he went:
‘Do you think I’ll get to operate it? We’ll put the media on it, and I’ll give them a little ride.’
The president of the United States is working out his personal problems and power fantasies while in office. This latest debacle mirrors a viral moment from early in Trump’s presidency, when in early 2017, he got into a large truck and pretended to drive it at a photo opportunity at the White House. The mockery over that incident reached the point of Buzzfeed publishing a mocking picture book titled The President and the Big-Boy Truck.
Besides his unsettling attempt to make light of trucks and cranes, Trump’s Tuesday speech was marked by relentless campaign-style rhetoric, although it was marketed as definitely not that. He singled out everyone from former Vice President and current presidential candidate Joe Biden to Hillary Clinton — who he faced in an election more than two years ago — for criticism over their supposed oh so terrible failings.
Featured Image via screenshot