I don't listen to Cooper's podcast, but I heard a lot about it on the recent Joe Rogan podcast — this one — with Dave Smith and Douglas Murray. Snippet:
SMITH: Darryl is incredibly knowledgeable.
MURRAY: He's not, he's, he's not... when he was offered to debate the current greatest living biographer of Churchill, he said, I can't because he knows much more than me and I admire his work and I've learned from it, but I can't possibly debate him....
ROGAN: Right. But you don't have to be able to debate people to have opinions on
things.... That's not your thing.
“We are so close,” he tells me. “We just need to see this through.” Trump may have won the presidency, but to enact the sweeping changes he wants to make — chief among them destroying the administrative state and deporting millions of undocumented migrants — he needs to move fast, with the support of his party.
"... a sense of having been born to rule, shared their thoughts and actions, pleasures and worries, badinage and anger, with the sovereign self-confidence which came naturally to both as they juggled with the fates of a score of nations."
From a 1977 review of "2 books with nearly identical titles" — "Roosevelt and Churchill 1939-1941: The Partnership That Saved the West" and "Roosevelt and Churchill: Their Secret Wartime Correspondence."
I encountered that in The New York Review of Books this morning as I was indulging in The Althouse Review of Badinage.
Do we have anyone like that today — a gifted amateur exuding a sense of having been born to rule, capable of sharing their thoughts and actions, pleasures and worries, badinage and anger, with a sovereign self-confidence that comes naturally?
Winston Churchill tends to get statements misattributed to him. His name on a statement is already a red flag that it might be a mistake. Please check first, especially if you are going to use one of these quotes in an important statement, as Ron DeSantis did.
Here's the Wikiquote page for Churchill. It's really long. It includes a section labeled "Misattributed." That section is really long too. Long, but entertaining. For example, Churchill did not say "A joke is a very serious thing." It's actually a line written by Charles Churchill — in 1763 poem called "The Ghost."
Alito didn’t name names but freely assigned motive. “It was part of an effort to prevent the Dobbs draft … from becoming the decision of the court,” he said. “And that’s how it was used for those six weeks by people on the outside — as part of the campaign to try to intimidate the court.”
Nice work, because this is the kind of inchoate smear that is impossible to defend against....
Ah! Can we have a general rule against inchoate smears?! They're impossible to defend against, so it's scurrilous to make them. Think hard before agreeing to the rule. How will you feel when it's used against you or someone you like? And what about the unintended side effects? If smears must be not be inchoate,* then sometimes, instead of blind items or silence, you'll get names.
"In Marseille, where activists may be both more stubborn and more chic than elsewhere, public enemy number one is not M Macron but the ubiquitous valise à roulettes (wheelie suitcase), without which no self-respecting weekender would even consider travelling in the 21st century.
Or would they? I used to feel smug as my dear domestic colleague slung his bag heavily over his shoulder at airports and railway stations (he considers wheels infra dig). But in Amsterdam the other day – we were there to see the Rijksmuseum’s sold-out Vermeer exhibition – I felt things shift. The sound of my plastic wheels on cobbles and tramlines was loud in my ears: a leper’s bell announcing my approach. As T sliced through the crowds, silently and stylishly, I was envious of him and embarrassed for myself."
I haven't seen "infra dig" in a long time, long enough to need to look it up to be sure I got it. Here's something from William Safire, in the NYT, from 2006, when — It's almost hard to believe — "infrastructure" was a word worth writing a column about:
"Shutting down Memorial is also another step in Mr. Putin’s effort to recast Russia’s legacy as a series of glorious accomplishments and soften the image of the often-brutal Soviet regime. While the state opened a comprehensive Gulag history museum in Moscow and Mr. Putin laid flowers at a new monument to the victims of Soviet repression, the increasingly emboldened Kremlin has moved aggressively to remove alternative interpretations of Russian history by organizations it does not control.... In recent years, Mr. Putin has shown a keen interest in shaping interpretation of Russia’s history, publishing his views in lengthy articles about the Soviet Union’s key contribution to the victory over Nazism and 'the historical unity of Russians and Ukrainians.' His viewpoint includes a renunciation of the democratic steps taken in the 1990s, which included reforms, self-criticism and social and economic upheaval.... 'There’s an old, banal formula that whoever doesn’t know the past is doomed to repeat it,' [said Jan Z. Raczynski, chairman of the board of Memorial International.] “The situation of the past decade shows we are moving in that direction.... The general prosecutor said we try to portray the Soviet Union as a terrorist organization... Well, we don’t have to try. The Soviet Union was a terrorist organization. In no other country were so many citizens imprisoned under false political accusations.'"
ADDED: The formula is "banal" because it's oft-repeated. It's a repetition about repetition. Yes, but who said it first?
Variations on the repeating-history theme appear alongside debates about attribution. Irish statesman Edmund Burke is often misquoted as having said, “Those who don’t know history are destined to repeat it.” Spanish philosopher George Santayana is credited with the aphorism, “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it,” while British statesman Winston Churchill wrote, “Those that fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it.”
AND: What are we doing now that is a repetition of the past that we don't know is a repetition because we haven't learned history?
And that's the way it goes, isn't it? Can't back down now! It will only inflame the issue and embolden the opposition.
How much pain — through the history of humankind — has flowed from that line of thinking?
Back to the specifics of the vaccine mandate: Biden took a hard line. He bet that the hard line would work best, get the most people vaccinated, avoid the most suffering and death. But too many people failed to snap to it and obey. So now what? The hard line must hold. Never give in. Never never never...
... except to convictions of honor and good sense.
The link on "Long, Hot Summer" goes to "In Miami-Dade, dueling rallies in support of Black Lives Matter and President Trump" (Miami Herald). I don't really know what's in that article that justifies the photograph of what I'm calling a blackface fist or that headline using a phrase that back in the 1960s meant there would be "race riots" in the city all summer....
It's got to be to chime with that blackface fist that Drudge chooses 2-fisted Biden to illustrate "POLL: Trump losing female vote by historic margin..." That picture is one of several pictures at the link, which goes to "LADY TROUBLES/Trump ‘losing female vote to Biden by a historic margin not seen in more than 50 years’ – but men still on his side'" (The Sun). In that poll, Biden has a 20-point advantage with women, and Trump has a 2-point advantage with men. Polls — who believes them?! But why 2 fists when the issue is his appeal to women? Don't we imagine that the female preference for Biden over Trump is that he seems to be a kinder, gentler fellow?
Perhaps Drudge means to suggest that women are going to need a strong protector, and there's Biden, balling up his fists — does he look adequate to fight for you, as this "long, hot summer" comes on? In that light, consider the third item in my screen shot: "Winston Churchill's picture mysteriously vanishes from Google amid rising tensions" (knewz):
Searches for ‘British prime minister’ and ‘World War 2 generals’ called up photos of everyone else but the legendary British prime minister — just after his statue in London was defiled. The images were eventually restored. The picture of Winston Churchill suspiciously vanished from Google search results on Saturday just as the legendary British prime minister was under siege from racial justice protesters in the United Kingdom. The images reappeared about 12 hours later on Sunday, with Google saying it was an unintentional “updating issue.”
The old-school belligerent male protector is disappearing from the scene, and all we've got left is old man Biden, because the women seem to think he'll have to do.
... described here. I don't know if I'm really doing the project, but I did watch the movie that would be the first movie, the 1960 Doris Day movie, "Please Don't Eat the Daisies." In 1960, I was 9 and I was taken to see this movie in the theater, I suppose by my mother, who must have liked Doris Day. I know she loved the Doris Day recording, "Sentimental Journey," and maybe she looked a little like Doris Day, especially around 1960, when she'd bleached her dark hair blonde. I remembered how I reacted to the movie when I was 9: I couldn't understand it, had no idea what was going on. Watching the movie last night, it was plain to see that the movie was incomprehensible to a 9 year old.
Though it had kids in it — Doris Day's 4 unruly sons — it was the story of a married couple with a disagreement about how to live — city or country? — that got the husband — David Niven — into a position to be sorely tempted to commit adultery. The husband and wife also kept approaching but not having sex, as those unruly sons would inevitably interrupt them (in a manner that I can now understand must have been funny to adults in 1960s even though it still doesn't make me laugh). Sexual frustration is expressed in the lyrics to the song "Please Don't Eat the Daisies" — "Here I am waitin' and anticipatin'... I'm so romantic but I'm gettin' frantic" — which is inexplicably sung by Doris while dancing in a circle with a couple dozen schoolchildren.
The husband is a New York City theater critic, and much of the story depends on fathoming what this job is and the sort of ethical issues that arise within it — should you pan a play written by your friend? — and the dynamic at cocktail parties and how success as a critic might warp a man's personality. None of that was accessible to me when I was 9!
Niven wants to live in NYC and go to literary parties. Doris wants a house in the country:
"There’s a gathering storm—everyone feels it, he feels it. His children are in jeopardy, and I feel that. I think, 'What if my children were in jeopardy?' I would do anything — anything — to get them out of trouble. So we should be afraid. That’s what I think."
"The Gathering Storm" is the title of the first volume of Winston Churchill's history of World War II. There are 2 films about Churchill with that title, one from 1974 starring Richard Burton and one from 2004 starring Albert Finney. Last year's movie about Winston Churchill, with Gary Oldman, was called "Darkest Hour." "Darkest Hour" is not the title of any of the WWII volumes. It's just "a phrase coined by British prime minister Winston Churchill to describe the period of World War II between the Fall of France in June 1940 and the Axis invasion of the Soviet Union in June 1941 (totaling 363 days, or 11 months and 28 days), when the British Empire and Commonwealth stood alone (or almost alone after the Italian invasion of Greece) against the Axis Powers in Europe."
At least Meryl Streep didn't feel that it's our darkest hour. It could be worse.
Meryl Streep is one of the all-time great movie actors. So was Richard Burton. Here he is agonizing over the gathering storm in "The Gathering Storm." He's in his jammies, so it's easy to view this as a visualization of Trump at 3 a.m. (in case you, like Meryl, are trying to do that and face an impoverishment of imagination):
IN THE COMMENTS: Ken B said: "What starlet was in danger from Harvey Weinstein, when Streep knew about him, and kept his secret? What about her 3 a.m.?"
I know I should have resisted and all my "friends" will see me as jerk, but I couldn't stop myself from responding to 2 things on Facebook just now. I won't reveal who put up these items, just my own response:
If Trump were colluding, why would he flaunt his involvement? The more apt inference is that the Russians wanted to make it look like they were taking orders from him and chose this moment, because it would be so weird it would agitate media like HuffPo to generate this theory.
2. A photojournalist's image of the Trump-as-a-diapered-baby balloon framed alongside a bronze statue of Winston Churchill. My response:
To get a fair comparison, show me how Trump is depicted 75 years in the future. Or recreate Churchill today, have him begin to enter politics, and show me how he would be regarded.
“Churchill would not get elected today. His speech was very peculiar, quite mumbled in some ways.... Churchill was very idiosyncratic in the way he spoke. Today public speaking has become so monotone and peculiarity is something that rolling news is very afraid of... It’s easy to pinpoint anybody’s idiosyncracies now, which I think is a terrible shame. Because some of the great orators were very individual in the way they spoke."
The article was from February 2016, when — here in the United States — "SNL" hadn't yet brought in Alec Baldwin to do the Trump impersonation. They relied on — do you even remember? — Taram Killam (and Daryl Hammond) and — Trump's victory was so impossible — even let the real Donald Trump host the show and goof around with Killam and Hammond:
Ha ha ha. What a joke. Trump is President now, and I'm just going to guess he'll be a bronze statue in 75 years.
"The First Lady’s spokeswoman, Stephanie Grisham, casts the blurriness of the Be Best campaign as a strength, 'something unique.' 'She has not narrowed her platform down to just one topic, as has been done in the past,' Grisham said, on CNN. 'Mrs. Trump wishes to help the next generation by creating change through awareness on a variety of issues.' Be best: Is it a competitive challenge to kids? (Yikes!) A benediction? A Yoda-esque mantra? It has a Trumpian tinge, a view of life as a competition divided into winners and losers.... Donald Trump’s emptiness revealed itself over decades in the media glare. But Melania, a former model, has long embraced vacancy as an aesthetic. She has the creepy, objectified opacity of a doll, or a robot—a shimmer of the uncanny valley. Her willed passivity may be the strongest expression of her agency. She is an avatar of blankness, a mute queen. Standing behind a podium in the Rose Garden, her husband in the audience, Melania spoke slowly, with practiced inflections; she sounded like an actor reading from a script that she didn’t quite understand...."
I haven't read the "Be Best" booklet. Is it a booklet? A website somewhere? But I can honestly say I haven't a clue what it means other than some idea of striving for excellence. What's weird about it is the absence of "your" before "best." We can't all be best, even if lots of us are tippy-top excellent and we work really, really hard. That's not enough if we aren't the best? I'd say it's "best" to give up and not play that competition.
But if "your" were there, "be" would seem wrong. The colloquial expression — not that Melania has any feeling for colloquial English — is "Do your best." But I guess that didn't seem strong enough. I did my best is something we often say lamely. And it seems to provoke the response, "Sometimes your best is not good enough." Isn't that a famous quote? The internet seems to credit Winston Churchill with the line, "Sometimes doing your best is not good enough. Sometimes you must do what is required."
Do what is required. Maybe some future first lady will use that. No, of course not. In America, you'd get a first lady going with "Do your own thing" before "Do what is required." We prefer freedom to being told what to do. And yet, you could have your own personal goals, and "Do what is required" would be nothing more than a prod to figure out the means to that end — your end — and get it done.
But Melania's mystifying slogan doesn't have the action word "do." Her verb is "be." Maybe it's not about achieving at all. Just "be." Maybe it's more hippie that "Do your own thing." It's "Be here now." We can have a Be-In. The notion of "best" melts away. It's all best.
"... but it's the same single piece idea as a romper. I also wear a one-piece when I do competitive road cycling.... It feels easy, and you're not messing around with it every time you sit down. It lays how it lays, and that's it."
Guy #2 said: "Damn! This isn't nearly as bad as I thought it would be. Actually... this is a solid look. A classic mechanic's suit...."
Guy #3 said also compared it to "a mechanic's jumpsuit," but didn't like the "dropped crotch"* and didn't recommend it: "Absolutely not. Under no circumstance could I, in good conscience, recommend anybody wear a romper at any point."
Guy #4, who was the only one given a pink romper, didn't mention the pinkness, but said: "It's an interesting feel because there's nothing on your waist. You feel a little naked, actually. I understand why women would enjoy it—it feels pretty good and breezy. Outside of the breeziness, the really low crotch is not great."
Guy #5, the only one who got a print (and it was a loud, fruity** print), liked it: "I felt like a little kid. It really brings out a lot of playful attitude." But he liked looking like a child — "I'd also recommend a regular onesie. I'd also recommend Crocs. Why not? And pinwheel hats." — so he's exactly what I've been talking about all these years about men in shorts: It makes them look like little boys. If that's the look you want, you've got it.
________________
* Technically — and this is my observation — the crotch has to be really low because the entire thing is pulled up by the shoulders. If you lift your arms up or bend your torso forward, the whole thing is going to go up. Men's clothing is normally broken up at the waist, so the parts operate independently. If you make it one continuous piece, you're going to need to account for all the movement of the upper body. This is why dresses make more sense as a one-piece garment: The crotch is out of the action.
** Pineapples.
________________
ADDED: The word "romper" to refer to the child's garment goes back as far as 1902, according to the OED. The word is used for an adult garment, beginning in 1922, and not always for something worn by women. The OED has a definition: "(a) a fashionable, loose-fitting woman's garment combining esp. a short-sleeved or sleeveless top and wide-legged shorts; (b) (U.S.) a style of loose-fitting men's breeches or knickerbockers (now rare); (c) (Brit. Services' slang) any of several styles of military uniform; (d) a light one-piece garment allowing easy movement of the limbs, worn as sports clothing." Many of the historical quotes relate to men (but always with an "s"):
1941 Amer. Speech 16 186/2 [British Army slang] Rompers, battle dress.
1943 ‘T. Dudley-Gordon’ Coastal Command 85 Sipping hot coffee as he took off his rompers (combined parachute harness and Mae West life-jacket) he told us of his first night raid.
1954 H. Macmillan Diary 24 Aug. (2003) 346, I left the F.O. at noon and arrived for luncheon at Chartwell just after 1pm. P.M. was in bed—so I had to wait 20 minutes till he had got up and put on his ‘rompers’....
1990 D. Jablonsky Churchill, Great Game & Total War 145 In 15 minutes, Churchill, dressed in his ‘rompers’ was in the Intelligence Operations Room outlining his intelligence requirements.
I saw bits of this speech yesterday and heard it critiqued by freakily emotive commentators on CNN. I had to look away. I'm up for watching/reading the whole thing now. Here's the full transcript. I'm going to read it and live-blog my reactions.
Well. I want to thank everybody. Very, very special people. And it is true: this is my first stop.
I don't remember seeing other Presidents speak in this location. Clearly, Trump intends the very fact of his appearance here to convey meaning.
Officially. We’re not talking about the balls, and we’re not talking about even the speeches. Although, they did treat me nicely on that speech yesterday [laughter]. I always call them “the dishonest media”, but they treated me nicely.
Trump immediately distracted himself. This seems almost like the way many speakers tell a joke or anecdote before getting to the real topic. Trump is warming himself up — and drawing the crowd in collusively — by voicing what is always between the lines: The press won't be fair to him. The press is listening to this speech, and hearing the challenge: I don't think you can be fair. And I don't just want fairness. I want niceness. If you won't give me good press, I'm going to push the dishonest media meme.
He gets into and then out of his sidetrack quickly. Perhaps it's a device to get us to lock into attention. He's the one that does distractions for you, so your mind doesn't wander. If you wander, you'll get confused. And if you do get confused, you might blame him. That's what his opponents do. His digressions drive them mad. He's accused of serving a "word salad" and of lacking any attention span. But he's keeping track. He cuts in a side issue and jumps back to continue where he left off:
But, I want to say that there is nobody that feels stronger about the Intelligence Community and the CIA than Donald Trump. [applause]. There’s Nobody. Nobody. And the wall behind me is very very special. We’ve been touring for quite a while. And I’ll tell you what: twenty … nine? I can’t believe it.. No. Twenty eight. We’ve got to reduce it. That’s amazing.
Yikes! He got back to the topic only to digress again — and it sounds really incoherent. I think the 29/28 may refer to the number of months he's been touring.
And we really appreciate it what you've done in terms of showing us something very special. And your whole group. These are really special, amazing people. Very, very few people could do the job you people do. And I want to just let you know: I am so behind you.
That's the message, the message already delivered by the choice of location, repeated in a few simple words. And then he repeats the verbal message, with a tinge of criticism to his predecessor:
And I know, maybe sometimes, you haven’t gotten the backing that you’ve wanted.
And he repeats it again as a self-effacing joke:
And you’re going to get so much backing. Maybe you’re going to say “please don’t give us so much backing”. [laughter] “Mr President, please, we don’t need that much backing”.
Returning to seriousness, he repeats it again:
But you’re going to have that. And I think everybody in this room knows it.
He's now done all that he showed up to do, I believe, and has maxed out the repetitions of the message. He supports the CIA. Noted.
Now what can he talk about?
You know, the military, and the law-enforcement generally speaking, -- but, all of it -- but the military, gave us tremendous percentages of votes.
Oh, why did I even have to ask?! His go-to conversational topic is his great, great victory in the election:
We were unbelievably successful in the election with getting the vote of the military and probably almost everybody in this room voted for me, but I will not ask you to raise your hands if you did. [laughter] But I would guarantee a big portion. Because we’re all on the same wavelength, folks. We’re all on the same wavelength. [applause] All right? [pointing to the crowd] He knows. Took Brian about 30 seconds to figure that one out, right? Because we know. We’re on the same wavelength.
That's not really the right material for the location, and I think he knows it. He's scanning the mental files for something appropriate to say, something Trumpropriate.
We’re going to do great things. We’re going to do great things.
Say it twice!
We’ve been fighting these wars for longer than any wars we’ve ever fought. We have not used the real abilities that we have. We’ve been restrained.
Aha:
We have to get rid of ISIS. We have to get rid of ISIS.
Say it twice!
We have no choice. [applause]
The go-to argument that is no argument.
Radical Islamic terrorism - and I said it yesterday - has to be eradicated.
He loves to say the phrase that Barack Obama would not say. He loves to say it and then stop and look at his having said it and comment that he has said it.
Just off the face of the Earth. This is evil. This is evil.
Say it twice!
And you know, I can understand the other side. We can all understand the other side.
Say it twice! You know, this claim to understand other perspectives — or at least one other perspective — is out of whack with reliance on the argument-that-is-not-an-argument we have no choice.
There can be wars between countries. There can be wars. You can understand what happened. This is something nobody could even understand.
Radical divergence from the say-it-twice rule of Trump rhetoric: Say it and then say exactly the opposite with equal conviction as if you haven't contradicted yourself.
But you know me. I am almost always eager to attempt a sympathetic reading to get some perspective on something that sounds so wrong. Here's me, doing that: Trump seems to have meant that with some wars, both sides have reasons to fight, and it's complicated figuring out what America ought to do, but radical Islamic terrorism is simply plain evil, so there's nothing to understand: Just eradicate what is plainly evil.
This is a level of evil that we haven’t seen. You’re going to go to it, and you’re going to do a phenomenal job. But we’re going to end it. It’s time. It’s time right now to end it.
The CIA has a job to do. But is "end it" really their job? Isn't Trump misunderstanding what they do? Or is he speaking so simply that it doesn't feel enough like an offer of understanding to warrant the label "misunderstanding"?
He finds a new topic in his mental file: The new CIA director:
You have somebody coming on who is extraordinary.
And he's immediately drifting into other territory:
You know for the different positions, of secretary of this and secretary of that and all of these great positions, I’d see five, six, seven, eight people. And we had a great transition. We had an amazing team of talent.
Great, great, amazing.
And by the way, General Flynn is right over here. Put up your hand, Mike. What a good guy [applause]
Compliments. Compliments. Everybody loves compliments. Let's see, who else can I compliment?
And Reince, and my whole group. Reince. You know Reince? They don’t care about Reince.
He knows this isn't a good topic! Why is he telling the CIA about Reince Preibus? They don’t care about Reince. Ah, what the hell? It's a thing to talk about and he hasn't talked long enough yet.
He’s like, this political guy that turned out to be a superstar, right? We don’t have to talk about Reince. But, we did. We had just such a tremendous, tremendous success. So when I’m interviewing all of these candidates that Reince and his whole group is putting in front, it went very, very quickly, and in this case went so quickly. Because I would see six or seven or eight for secretary of agriculture, who we just named the other day.
Suddenly, it's not about Reince anymore. It's about agriculture. He's telling the CIA about the Secretary of Agriculture!
Sunny [sic] Perdue. Former Governor of Georgia. Fantastic guy. But I’d see six, seven, eight people for a certain position. Everybody wanted it.
It's like he's talking in his sleep, babbling impressionistic memories of the last few weeks. Maybe this will get to why Flynn Pompeo* is great. Hang on.
But I met Mike Pompeo, and he was the only guy I met. I didn’t want to meet anybody else. I said “cancel everybody else”. Cancel. Now he was approved, essentially. But they’re doing a little political games with me.
"They" are the Democrats in the Senate, I assume. But this is what I mean about babbling. There's a positive side to this: He gives us the feeling that we are now inside his head, seeing his thoughts. But there's something almost insane about the assumption we know what the references are. Pronouns without antecedents? A disembodied "they" is playing games with him. He makes it so easy for his antagonists to cry: Paranoid!
You know, he was one of the three.
The three? The three what? I have to try to construct a thought that he thought that I was not privy too, despite the feeling of being inside his brain.
Now, last night, as you know, General Mattis - fantastic guy - and General Kelly got approved [applause] And Mike Pompeo was supposed to be in that group; it was going to be the three of them.
Okay. The three nominees the Senate was going to vote to confirm on Friday.
Can you imagine? All of these guys. People respect … they respect that military sense. All my political people? They’re not doing so well. The political people aren’t doing so well…
See? It's like he's talking in his sleep! He's trying to say that the nominees with a military background are advancing in the confirmation process more quickly than the ones with a political background, such as Mike Pompeo.
... but you … We’re going to get them all through. But some will take a little bit longer than others.
He finally gets back to the CIA-appropriate material — Mike Flynn Pompeo*:
But Mike was literally -- I had a group of, what, we had nine different people? -- Now. I must say, I didn’t mind cancelling eight appointments. That wasn’t the worst thing in the world.
That is, there were 9 people set to interview for CIA director, and he interviewed the first one, and decided that's the guy. Tough luck to you other 8.
But I met him, and I said “he is so good”. Number one in his class at West Point. Now, I know a lot about West Point. I’m a person that very strongly believes in academics.
Oh, no. Here it comes:
In fact, every time I say, I had an uncle who was a great professor at MIT for 35 years, who did a fantastic job in so many different ways academically. He was an academic genius.
Had to say that. Just had to say that. And then you know what comes next? He must add an assertion about his own genetic gift:
And then they say: “is Donald Trump an intellectual?” Trust me. I’m like a smart person....
He snaps out of the digression:
And I recognized immediately. So he was Number 1 at West Point. And he was also essentially number 1 at Harvard Law School. And then he decided to go into the military. And he ran for Congress. And everything he’s done has been a home run. People like him. But much more importantly to me, everybody respects him.
When I told Paul Ryan that I want to do this, I would say, he may be the only person that was not totally thrilled, right, Mike? Because he said “I don’t want to lose this guy."
You will be getting a total star.
A star? And when you’re a star... you can do anything.
You going to be getting a total gem. He is a gem.
Say it twice!
And I just …. [applause] You’ll see. You’ll see. And many of you know him anyway. But you’re going to see. And again: we have some great people going, but this one is something, going to be very special, because this is one of -- if I had to name the most important, this would certainly be, perhaps, you know, in certain ways, you could even say my most important. You do the job like everybody in this room is capable of doing. And the generals are wonderful and the fighting is wonderful.
Wonderful wonderful.
But if you give them the right direction? Boy, does the fighting become easier. And boy do we lose so fewer lives, and win so … quickly.
I know he just means to compliment everyone and give respect to the lower-downs and the higher-ups. But this is scarily babbly when he's talking about human lives.
And that’s what we have to do. We have to start winning again.
A familiar line circled around to the front of the brain and flew out. Yeah, we need to win wars. But forget that, Trump wants to muse about when he was young...
You know what? When I was young, And when I was … of course, I feel young.
And his digression provoked a digression. He suddenly doesn't want to talk about when he was young but how young he feels today:
I feel like I’m 30. 35. 39. [laughter]. Somebody said “are you young?” I said “I think I’m young."
Somebody said something, and then I said something and then....
You know, I was stopping when we were in the final month of that campaign.
And now we're back at the original digression, the story of the campaign.
Four stops, five stops. Seven stops. Speeches -- speeches -- in front of twenty five, thirty thousand people. Fifteen thousand, nineteen thousand, from stop to stop.
Numbers numbers numbers. Say some numbers. And they add up to...
I feel young.
Back to the when I was young digression:
But when I was young -- and I think we’re all sort of young -- when I was young, we were always winning things in this country. We’d win with trade. We’d win with wars. At a certain age I remember hearing from one of my instructors “The United States has never lost a war.”
Oh, I remember hearing that live yesterday. I remember remembering that I always heard "The United States has never lost a war." And the other thing I remember remembering yesterday when Trump was remembering always hearing "The United States has never lost a war" is how important that perfect record was in getting us deeper and deeper into the hell of Vietnam. If Trump remembers that, he doesn't say it.
And then, after that, it’s like, we haven’t won anything. We don’t win anymore.
The campaign slogan cycles to the front of the brain again. And then another old idea:
The old expression: “to the victor belong the spoils” - you remember? You always used to say “keep the oil”. I wasn’t a fan of Iraq. I didn’t want to go into Iraq. But I will tell you. When we were in, we got out wrong. And I always said: “In addition to that, keep the oil”.
Let's see what Mike thinks about that:
Now I said it for economic reasons, but if you think about, Mike, if we kept the oil we would probably wouldn’t have ISIS, because that’s where they made their money in the first place. So we should have kept the oil. But okay. [laughter] Maybe we’ll have another chance. But the fact is: we should’ve kept the oil.
Mike doesn't get to engage on this interesting policy question, but maybe Trump and Flynn have talked about keeping the oil.
Trump gets back to his core message, suggesting he's bringing this speech in for a landing:
I believe that this group is going to be one of the most important groups in this country towards making us safe, towards making us winners again. Towards ending all of the problems -- we have so many problems that are interrelated that we don’t even think of, but interrelated -- to the kind of havoc and fear that this sick group of people has caused.
So I can only say that I am with you 1000%.
Numbers. Fake numbers. Fake on their face. It's okay. Numbers are beautiful. Fantastic. I love numbers!
And the reason you’re my first stop is that as you know, I have a running war with the media. They are among the most dishonest human beings on Earth. [laughter, applause]
I'm having deja vu.
And they sort of made it sound like I had a feud with the Intelligence Community. And I just want to let you know, the reason you’re the number 1 stop is exactly the opposite. Exactly. And they understand that too.
Ah, this connects 2 topics that seemed disconnected at the beginning of the speech. But he drops that to bring in another example of media dishonesty:
And I was explaining about the numbers. We did a thing yesterday...
A thing. The Inauguration!
... the speech, and everybody really liked the speech, you had to right? [applause] We had a massive field of people. You saw that. Packed. I get up this morning. I turn on one of the networks and they show an empty field. I say: “wait a minute. I made a speech. I looked out. The field was…. It looked like a million, a million and a half people.” They showed a field where there was practically nobody standing there. And they said “Donald Trump did not draw well”. And I said “well it was almost raining”. The rain should have scared them away. But God looked down and he said “we’re not going to let it rain on your speech”.
Now, he's switching to the subject of the rain, about which there is no dispute with the media and no possible connection to the CIA.
In fact, when I first started I said “oh no”. First line, I got hit by a couple of drops. And i said “oh, this is too bad, but we’ll go right through it”. But the truth is: that it stopped immediately. It was amazing. And then it became really sudden, and then I walked off and it poured right after I left - it poured.
At least he resisted additional speculation about God's expressing his opinion through precipitation.
But you know, we have something that’s amazing because, we had, it looked honestly, it looked like a million and a half people. Whatever it was. But it went all the way back to the Washington Monument. And I turn on, with my steak … and I get this network shows an empty field. And it said we drew 250,000 people.
With my steak?! Come on, Washington Post! He didn't suddenly inject the subject of what he was eating for dinner as he watched the news. He said: "And I turn on, and by mistake, I get this network and it shows an empty field."
Now that’s not bad. But it’s a lie. We had 250,000 people literally around, you know, the little bowl that we constructed. That was 250,000 people. The rest of the 20 block area all the way back to the Washington Monument was packed. So we caught them. And we caught them in a beauty. And I think they’re going to pay a big price.
And a lot of people think that right here he's getting caught in a beauty and he's going to have to pay a big price. But it's like those thousands of Muslims dancing on the rooftops of Jersey City. He doesn't have to pay a big price. He got a big reward. He doesn't have to stick to facts. He can waft stories and call other people liars. He's probably right that the others are lying (or somewhere on the continuum between truth and lies). And he knows he can win by rousing us all from the dream of truth. It's all fake news, so pick the story you like. And he only needs half of the people to like his storytelling to get all of the power.
They had another one yesterday which was interesting. In the Oval Office there’s a beautiful statue of Dr Martin Luther King. And I also happen to like Churchill.
Churchill digression:
Winston Churchill. I think most of us like Churchill. He doesn’t come from our country. But he had lot to do with it. He helped us. A real ally. And as you know, the Churchill statue was taken out. The bust. And as you probably also have read, the Prime Minister is coming over to our country very shortly, and they wanted to know whether or not I’d like it back. And I said “absolutely, but in the meantime we have a bust of Churchill”.
So a reporter for Time magazine. And I have been on their cover like 14 or 15 times. I think we have the all time record in the history of Time magazine. Like it Tom Brady is on the cover of Time magazine, it’s one time, because he won the Superbowl or something, right? [laughter]. I’ve been on for 15 times this year. I don’t think that’s a record, Mike, that they can ever be broken, do you agree with that? What do you think?
A digression in the middle of a digression. Trump's face on Time. And I've heard he got it wrong that this was a record, but I don't really care anymore. It's just an idea. His face is on Time a lot.
Getting back to MLK:
But I will say that, he said something that was very interesting: that “Donald Trump took down the bust, the statue, of Dr Martin Luther King”. It was right there. But there was a cameraman that was in front of it.
So Zeke - Zeke - from Time magazine writes a story about how I took it down. But I would never do that, because I have great respect for Dr Martin Luther King. But this is how dishonest the media is: a big story. And the retraction was like -- was it a line? Or did they even bother putting it in?
The MLK statue story. Man, that's a long story. But it's a memorable chapter in The Story of How Truth Died.
So I only like to say that because I love honesty. I like honest reporting.
Truth was dearly loved.
I will tell you the final time: although I will say it, when you let in your thousands of other people that had been trying to come in, because I am coming back. We may have to get you a larger room. [laughter, applause] We may have to get you a larger room. And maybe - maybe - it’ll be built by somebody that knows how to build and we won’t have columns [laughter] You understand that? We’d get rid of the columns.
He's talking about the CIA Headquarters and implying that he'd like to put on his construction hat and build them a better building — one where thousands can amass and columns do not obstruct their gaze upon the face that has launched a thousand TIME magazines.
I just wanted to really say that I love you.
That's disarming. You forget all the abuse.
I respect you. There’s nobody that I respect more. You’re going to do a fantastic job. And we’re going to start winning again. And you’re going to be leading the charge. So thank you all very much. Thank you, beautiful. Thank you all very much. Have a good day. I’ll be back. I’ll be back. Thank you.
Goodbye. Thank you. Have a nice day.
____________________________
* I got confused about the 2 Mikes. I'm sure the CIA people in the room did not.
In an interview posted on the press’s website, Ms. Alexievich said her technique of blending journalism and literature was inspired by the Russian tradition of oral storytelling. “I decided to collect the voices from the street, the material lying about around me,” she said. “Each person offers a text of his or her own.”
“By means of her extraordinary method — a carefully composed collage of human voices — Alexievich deepens our comprehension of an entire era,” the academy said.
ADDED: What's really interesting here is that the Nobel Prize in Literature has been awarded for writing nonfiction, though it's not purely nonfiction. It's a "mix
of nonfiction and fiction."
I want to know which purely nonfiction writers have won!
While the Nobel committee has occasionally awarded the prize to nonfiction writers, including Bertrand Russell and Winston Churchill, it has been decades since a journalist or historian has won. Some prominent writers, among them the New Yorker writer Philip Gourevitch, have called for the Nobel judges to recognize nonfiction as a worthy art form.
Yes, older people tend to be conservative, and older people tend to die.
And yet, everybody's always getting older, tending more toward conservatism, and, yes, eventually, dying. So the more conservative party is always dying, but it's also always receiving new entrants, as the once-young become old.
Now's a good time to roll out the old Churchill/not-really-Churchill quote: "If you're not a liberal when you're 25, you have no heart. If you're not a conservative by the time you're 35, you have no brain."
"The world had been watching and waiting since Jan. 15, when it was announced that Sir Winston had suffered a stroke. The last authentic giant of world politics in the 20th century was going down." Wrote Anthony Lewis in the NYT.
For nine days the struggle went on. Medical experts said that only phenomenal tenacity and spirit of life could enable a man of 90 to hold off death so long in these circumstances.
But then those were the qualities that had made Winston Churchill a historical figure in his lifetime. His pluck in rallying Britain to victory in World War II saved not only this country but, in all likelihood, free nations everywhere.... With almost all of Europe under or about to fall under the Nazi jackboot, it was Sir Winston who flung this challenge at the enemy:
"We shall not flag, or fail. We shall go on to the end, we shall fight in France, we shall fight on the seas and oceans, we shall fight with growing confidence and growing strength in the air, we shall defend our island, whatever the cost may be, we shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender, and even if, which I do not for a moment believe, this island or a large part of it were subjugated and starving, then our empire beyond the seas, armed and guarded by the British fleet, would carry on the struggle, until, in God's good time, the new world, with all its power and might, steps forth to the rescue and the liberation of the old."
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