Donald Trump is going to give a likely boring and un-Trump State of the Union speech tonight, and in the coming days he will be praised for a shift in tone and rhetoric and there will be much talk of a RESET from the pundit class. It will be measured and contingent talk of a reset, but rest assured there will be lots of B+ grades handed out. And then, in a couple of days, he'll be lounging on his big boy bed in the residence, numming on his mid-morning cheeseburger and wiping his hands on the sheets, and he'll start tweeting Fox & Friends chyrons with added Presidential Editorial Exclamation Points again, and we'll be right back where we were last week, but three more bad cholesterol points closer to the Mike Pence presidency. Instead of all that unpleasant reality, let's imagine Trump ignores the prompter and goes off script--a turn of such magnitude and import that we would likely see the United States drowned in a sea of foaming, frothing pundit spittle--a pivot to sanity. Here's what a real reset would sound like.
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE -- TRANSCRIPT OF PRESIDENT TRUMP'S 2018 STATE OF THE UNION SPEECH
Thank you very much. Thank you. What an introduction! What an honor for all of you. Mr. Speaker, Mr. Vice President, Members of Congress, and my fellow Americans--
In 2016--do you remember 2016, when I vanquished the greatest field of Republican nominees ever assembled to gain the Republican nomination for president? It was like The Avengers movie, they were so good, except in the Trump Avengers movie the Avengers lost, because I won. Trump won. What a tremendous victory. Nobody thought it was possible. Really, still quite unbelievable, actually. And then Crooked Hillary--remember *LOCK HER UP, LOCK HER UP*? Ahh, great memories. Just the best.
Anyway, in July 2016, the failing New York Times--which was failing bigly before Trump came along to give them something to write about, believe me--reported that I offered to make John Kasich the most powerful vice president in history. At the time, of course, we dismissed this as Fake News, but today I want to set the record straight--I really did want to make John the VP.
John is a solid Republican with a history of getting things done in Congress and for the great state of Iowa--or, ahh, the great state of Pittsburgh--no, that's not...Ohio! Yes, Ohio. Did the Democrats love him? No, but they could work with him. But John didn't want the job, and I got stuck with Koch Industries' Castrated Captain America Doll, Jesus Freak Edition--or, as you know him, The Shame of Indiana and a great source of amusement to his own family, Mike Pence. So Mike takes care of the domestic and foreign policy with the help of my great generals, and I take care of the...other stuff, like Twitter, and Making America Great Again, and occasionally pouring gasoline on the eternal flame of racial resentment. Look, it gets the base going, which gets me going, okay? Everybody's got their own little blue pill, if you know what I mean.
(https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/10/23/the-danger-of-president-pence)
The point is, I don't want this. I don't want to go down as the most widely hated president in history. Of course, I can literally do no wrong in the eyes of my core base, but the truth is, I don't crave the approval of those idiots. I look around, and I try to remember how I got here, and I just can't explain it. All I really wanted was to be taken seriously by the New York Times and CNN. I crave the validation of the establishment so badly I can feel it in my stubby little fingers.
What I'm saying is, this has all been, this last year, this has been, at least in part, John Kasich's fault. This Pence guy, these Koch people--I mean, what are we doing? I get out front and make a bunch of perverse noise and everybody talks about it, but behind the scenes the Republicans are implementing all the worst policies of the hard Christian and corporatist right. "Theocratic Robber Barons Fronted by Surprisingly Fit and Healthy Racist Orange Clown" is not how I want this presidency remembered! I want to spend the next three years doing what's actually right for this country, not because I love this country or any of you, particularly, but strictly in service of more television people and newspapers saying nice things about me. I'm not very complex, psychologically--I seek the love I was denied as a child, and I seek it from impersonal institutions because they are far more real to me than actual people are. To be honest, I'm not sure other people exist, but that's neither here nor there. Seriously, though, how can Ivanka be real? You couldn't sculpt a finer example of...AHEM. Excuse me.
(https://www.politico.com/story/2016/10/trump-ivanka-piece-of-ass-howard-stern-229376)
Of course, it'll be hard for a lot of you to forget a lot of the more overtly terrible things I've said and done in the last few years. And that's fair! But if we focus on just a few things--a few obvious, widely agreed upon things that the majority of Americans already agree about, maybe we can get this Trump presidency somewhere to the back-middle of the pack, historically. I mean, I didn't start multiple wars or start a Presidential kill list--that's gotta count for something, right? And this isn't just for my benefit--the chances of nuclear holocaust go down significantly if there are more people saying nice things about me. So, help me help me, ok? And by helping me help me, we help all of us not die. This is a great deal, the best deal, really.
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To that end, there are three simple things I want to do that most Americans would agree with, Democrats and Republicans and most everyone else.
First, on the Russia question. I want to start by saying that there was no collusion, as I've said many times. No collusion. Let me tell you something, though--I was really quite alarmed and surprised when I won the election in 2016, as were many of you. I honestly didn't think it was going to happen. And when it actually did, and everybody started talking about Russian interference and possible collusion with the Trump campaign, I started to get a bit paranoid about somebody taking the credit away from me. In my dumb little head--which is actually very smart, among the smartest in the world, but still, I recognize the occasional blind spot--I've sincerely struggled to separate Russian interference in the election with the accusations of collusion. Whenever somebody says Russia I just get so steamed, I can't think straight, and my administration has totally failed to properly address Russia's interference in our election.
We must do everything in our power to prevent Vladimir Putin and the Russian government from meddling in our democratic processes. I don't think Russian Twitter and Facebook activity changed the outcome of our election, but our intelligence agencies assure me that what we saw in 2016 is likely just the beginning. This is a national security issue of the highest priority--and not just here in the United States. There is evidence that Russia has interfered in democratic processes in at least 19 countries, from supporting a coup in Montenegro to funding the far-right National Front party in France to fanning the flames for Brexit in Britain. This must stop now!
That is why, next month, we will seek a multilateral agreement with our allies in Europe and our partner China to place harsh sanctions on Russian exports in the energy and defense sectors, and seek to punish any corporations or individuals that do business with Russian oligarchs. Quite simply: the world will not buy and burn Russian natural gas or crude oil until we can be absolutely certain that they will never interfere with the democratic processes of other countries, especially ours, ever again. This is an issue of national sovereignty, and we will not allow the democratic foundations of our nation and the other free nations of the world to be undermined by Russia, or any other country. We do that quite well enough on our own, thank you very much.
Oh, and the Trump Organization has served, for many years, as an unwitting money-laundering vessel for many different Russian oligarchs, but that's hardly our fault. Also, the pee tape probably exists. What are you gonna do? Things get weird, sometimes. If there's a tape there's a tape. So much for your *Kompromat,* Vlad. Can't shame the shameless, and no one in history is more shameless than me, believe me.
Okay, number two, and this one is going to possibly upset some of my base a little. Listen--the Wall, it was never supposed to be this big 60-foot tall concrete thing. I would get carried away on the campaign trail, yes, and it kinda became the big signature promise. But to be fair, it played well! There's a big fat market for that sort of talk. It's a powerful idea, this notion that we can build a wall. And look, we already have a good bit of wall in place! It's not like I invented the whole Wall idea. So let's make a deal! You give me a rhetorical win on the wall, and I won't build it, at least not how you're thinking. We'll reinforce where we need to reinforce, and we'll build new where we need to build new, and we'll spend the rest of the money as smartly as possible. The truth is, we need to secure southern border, but it's not as dire as I've made it sound in the past.
As part of the Wall deal, let's go ahead and create a quick pathway to citizenship for anyone who was brought into this country as an undocumented minor--the so-called Dreamers. These were kids who were brought here through no fault of their own, and have been raised here as Americans. I think a decent compromise for the Dreamers' parents--who ultimately were simply seeking a better opportunity for their family in the greatest country on earth--is some sort of non-citizen legal status that allows them to get in the back of the line for citizenship. Combined with a new commitment to securing the border and some minor tweaks to the legal immigration system, that's a fair compromise that the majority of Americans agree with.
Look, we let in too many people just because they're related to somebody already here. Of course, chain or family migration helps strengthen American communities by establishing multi-generational families in this country, and it can be a very good thing. But we can limit that a little bit more, can't we? Let's set some limits. I don't know what the final number should be, but something like 30-40 percent seems reasonable. Let's pair that with my system of extreme vetting for bringing in refugees and a merit-based system for the bulk of the rest. And I don't just mean engineers and doctors! There's great merit in doing service and blue-collar work, and we should be sure to include those workers, too. After all, unemployment is really quite low--there are plenty of jobs to go around.
And all the stuff about rapists and murderers and drug dealers? Look, I'm not big on apologies. Like I said a couple minutes ago, there was a big market for that kinda talk. People just eat it right up! This isn't my fault, really. Not entirely, anyway. It worked! Here we are!
Finally, number three on the list of things we can solve simply by looking at what the overwhelming majority of Americans think is fair: abortion.
Just kidding! Third, we should federally decriminalize marijuana offenses and move in the direction of legalization and regulation. Most Americans recognize that the war on drugs has been an abject failure. Too many Americans have had their lives ruined by our misguided drug laws, rotting in prison for offenses that either shouldn't be crimes or should be treated with psychological, psychiatric, and medical care rather than imprisonment. So, Sessions baby, you're FIRED, you S.O.B.
(http://www.drugpolicy.org/press-release/2014/04/new-pew-poll-confirms-americans-ready-end-war-drugs)
I know I've been wildly unpopular. I'm not here to say I'm sorry or beg for forgiveness. I'm here to say I'm an old man, I'm going to die sooner than later, and I'd like to go out knowing that, when it was all said and done, I wasn't the worst president this country ever had. Just like, somewhere in the mid-to-low thirties.
Can we do a little Trump chant, or something, just to close things out? That always gets me all jazzed. Trump! Trump! Trump. Trump? No? Okay, I get it, it's fine. But seriously, let's do this, for me. And for you, incidentally, it's a good deal for you, too. But mostly for me.
God bless you, God bless America, and God bless Twitter, Amen. Goodnight!
:: END TRANSCRIPT ::