The White House Called a News Conference. Trump Turned
It Into a Meandering Monologue.
The
president spoke in the Rose Garden for 63 minutes. He spent only six of those
minutes answering questions from reporters.
By Peter Baker
·
July 14,
2020Updated 9:28 p.m. ET
WASHINGTON — In theory, President Trump
summoned television cameras to the heat-baked Rose Garden early Tuesday evening
to announce new measures against China to punish it for its oppression of Hong
Kong. But that did not last long.
What followed instead was an hour of
presidential stream of consciousness as Mr. Trump drifted seemingly at random
from one topic to another, often in the same run-on sentence. Even for a
president who rarely sticks to the script and wanders from thought to thought,
it was one of the most rambling performances of his presidency.
He weighed in on China and the
coronavirus and the Paris climate change accord and crumbling highways. And
then China again and military spending and then China again and then the
coronavirus again. And the economy and energy taxes and trade with Europe and
illegal immigration and his friendship with Mexico’s president. And the
coronavirus again and then immigration again and crime in Chicago and the death
penalty and back to climate change and education and historical statues. And
more.
“We could go on for days,” he said at
one point, and it sounded plausible.
At
times, it was hard to understand what he meant. He seemed to suggest that his
presumptive Democratic challenger, former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr.,
would get rid of windows if elected and later said that Mr. Biden would
“abolish the suburbs.” He complained that Mr. Biden had “gone so far right.”
(He meant left.)
Even for those who follow Mr. Trump
regularly and understand his shorthand, it became challenging to follow his
train of thought.
For instance, in discussing cooperation
agreements with Central American countries to stop illegal immigration, he had
this to say: “We have great agreements where when Biden and Obama used to bring
killers out, they would say don’t bring them back to our country, we don’t want
them. Well, we have to, we don’t want them. They wouldn’t take them. Now with
us, they take them. Someday, I’ll tell you why. Someday, I’ll tell you why. But
they take them and they take them very gladly. They used to bring them out and
they wouldn’t even let the airplanes land if they brought them back by
airplanes. They wouldn’t let the buses into their country. They said we don’t
want them. Said no, but they entered our country illegally and they’re
murderers, they’re killers in some cases.”
At another point, he took a jab at Mr.
Biden’s mental acuity. “Let him define the word carbon, because he won’t be
able to,” Mr. Trump said. That has been a theme of his lately, unsubtly
implying that Mr. Biden has grown senile. Just last week, Mr. Trump, 74, boasted that he had recently taken a cognitive test and
“aced it,” while insisting that Mr. Biden, 77, “couldn’t pass” such an exam.
The disjointed monologue, however, may
not have been the most convincing evidence. On Twitter, his critics quickly
compared him to a grandfather who had broken into the sherry cabinet. “Trump is a truly sick individual,” wrote Jon
Favreau, who was President Barack Obama’s chief speechwriter. Rick Wilson, a
founder of the Lincoln Project, a group of anti-Trump Republicans, called
it “rambling verbal dysentery.”
The
appearance came on the same day that the president’s estranged niece, Mary L.
Trump, a clinical psychologist, published a scathing book questioning his mental
health and asserting that pathologies stemming from his childhood are playing
out now on the world stage. Mr. Trump has not commented about the book, but in
the past he has rejected such contentions by describing himself as “a very stable
genius.”
The focus of the evening session with
reporters took a turn after Mr. Biden received extensive television coverage
earlier in the day for his $2 trillion climate plan, according to a senior
official who spoke on the condition of anonymity. The Hong Kong Autonomy Act,
the ostensible reason for his appearance, was treated as an afterthought.
In effect, the news conference turned
into a campaign speech to substitute for the one Mr. Trump was scheduled to
give last weekend in New Hampshire only to cancel amid concerns about flagging
attendance, citing a possible storm at the site of the rally.
While presidents as a general rule are not supposed to engage in overt
campaigning from the White House itself, Mr. Trump made little effort to
disguise his intent as he mentioned Mr. Biden’s name more than 20 times as he
spoke in the Rose Garden.
Most of the time, the president paid
little attention to the text he seemed to have brought with him, but he
eventually read from what he claimed was Mr. Biden’s campaign agenda but was in
fact a misleading compilation assembled by his own political advisers.
“Joe Biden’s entire career has been a
gift to the Chinese Communist Party,” Mr. Trump declared.
Reading from what he was given, he
quoted Mr. Biden. “He said that the idea that China is our competition is
really bizarre,” the president said. “He’s really bizarre.”
The appearance came on a day when Mr.
Trump seemed eager to challenge convention and, at times, basic facts.
During an earlier interview with CBS
News, he denied that Black Americans suffered from police
brutality more than white Americans.
Asked why Black Americans were “still
dying at the hands of law enforcement in this country,” Mr. Trump said: “So are
white people. So are white people. What a terrible question to ask. So are
white people. More white people, by the way. More white people.”
Statistics
show that while more white Americans are killed by the police over all, people
of color are killed at higher rates when accounting for population differences.
A federal study that
examined lethal force used by the police from 2009 to 2012 found that a
majority of victims were white, but that Black people were 2.8 times likelier
to be killed than white people.
In the same interview, Mr. Trump
dismissed concerns about the Confederate battle flag. “With me, it’s freedom of
speech,” he said. “Very simple. Like it, don’t like it, it’s freedom of
speech.”
Asked about those who see it as a
painful symbol of slavery, he said: “I know people that like the Confederate
flag, and they’re not thinking about slavery.”
In a separate interview, with the conservative website
Townhall.com, that was published on Tuesday, Mr. Trump falsely claimed that a
white couple in St. Louis who confronted peaceful marchers outside their home
with guns were on the verge of being attacked. “They were going to be beat up
badly, and the house was going to be totally ransacked and probably burned
down,” he said.
Video of the episode, which became a flash point in the
national debate over racial inequality, showed that the protesters at no point
physically threatened the couple.
Mr. Trump’s Rose Garden appearance had
its share of false or misleading statements, as well. He complained once again
that the rising cases of the coronavirus in the United States were really
because of an increase in testing. “If we did half the testing, we’d have half
the cases,” he said. He likewise brushed off the death toll of more than 136,000 by saying that he
had saved as many as three million people by taking the actions he did.
But he was eager to take on Mr. Biden
after weeks of trailing him by double digits in the polls, blaming the former
vice president for everything from crumbling highways to closed factories. “Joe
Biden is pushing a platform that would demolish the U.S. economy, totally
demolish it,” Mr. Trump said.
Mr.
Biden, he added, has moved so far to the left that he has “the most extreme
platform of any major-party nominee by far in American history.” He cited Mr.
Biden’s climate plan to reduce carbon emissions for new homes and offices by
2030. “That basically means no windows,” the president said.
While advertised as a news conference,
in fact Mr. Trump took only a few questions, devoting six minutes of the
63-minute event to responding before abruptly cutting it off. But he promised
he was not finished: “We will be having these conferences again.”
