Tuesday Evening, Post-Speech

Didn't Trump look, in his address tonight, like a P.O.W. who was reading the text he was ordered to read by men standing just off-camera with guns trained on him? And talk about Low Energy. This was a speech that pleased no one: The folks supporting him must have been disappointed he didn't pound the desk, vow to crush his opponents and tell them that he was going to build the wall, damn it, and if they didn't like it, they could all take a long walk off a short pier. The folks not supporting him were annoyed because it was Trump giving a speech.

Actually, what I think the Republican Party wants here is for Trump to get the money for The Wall and then never build it. Getting the money would enable him to look like a winner and a powerful man who should be re-elected in 2020. Never getting around to building the wall would keep cheap, subservient labor coming into this country for corporations to exploit. Win-win!

Anyway, here's David Frum on where we are now, post-speech. The sub-head on his piece says, "The president, trapped without a decent exit in a predicament of his own making, will yield everything and get nothing."

And while we're on the Atlantic website, here's David A. Graham analyzing the speech in greater detail and we also have James Fallows explaining why the TV networks should not have given Trump the airtime. Indeed.