Blame Trump’s boasts for continued mockery
Michael A. Lindenberger says the president receives little compassion for ‘human flubs’ because his pride and bullying set him up for ridicule.
We all make goofs, and those of us who speak to or write for the public almost daily are going to make our full share. I once wrote a long analysis of a historic U.S. Supreme Court case for TIME and learned only after it was published that I had been off on the date of the decision by two years. Talk about looking foolish.
None of that prepared me for some of the things that came out of President Trump’s mouth Thursday during his muchballyhooed speech at the Lincoln Memorial.
I confess I wasn’t the most sympathetic audience. Count me among those who felt he’d unnecessarily, and rather boorishly, inserted himself into the annual Fourth of July festivities that could have gotten along without him quite nicely. The fighter jets screaming over head, the speech, the cordoned-off area for Republican donors and other bigwigs — none of it could top the sheer beauty of Americans gathering on their own accord to show their love of country in one of our great public spaces.
It’s also true that I expected things to go much worse Thursday.Trump talked less about himself than usual, though, and left for another day his mockery of political opponents, the press and immigrants.
Instead, he gave a lecture on American military history. Stable genius that he is notwithstanding, he made a few errors.
He praised the Continental Army, saying it “rammed the ramparts and took over the airports” — even though the events happened more than 125 years before the Wright brothers launched the first successful airplane in 1903. Trump said the Continental Army was named “for” George Washington. It wasn’t. Trump also praised the same army for persevering in the face of the “rockets’ red glare” at Fort McHenry.
That’s just bizarre. Francis Scott Key wrote the Star-Spangled Banner during a night of bombardment of the fort by the British Royal Navy during the Battle of Baltimore in September 1814. It was part of an entirely different war with the British — one we lost, actually — and occurred more than 30 years after the Revolutionary War ended in 1783. By the War of 1812, there was no Continental Army, only the U.S. Army. In any case, Fort McHenry’s defenders were a mix of sailors, U.S. Army soldiers and citizen militiamen from Maryland.
Widespread mockery followed Trump’s address immediately. Perhaps it’s because anyone who goes around declaring how brilliant he is, and with such scant evidence, is setting himself up for a fall. I don’t know. I do know that Trump loyalists don’t much care what he says. They listen for how he says it. It’s the swagger and contempt that counts.
On that score, too, Trump’s speech might have been a disappointment. It struck a more generous tone. In my book, that counts as a victory.
Trump subsequently blamed the mistakes on a malfunctioning teleprompter, a device he used to excoriate President Obama for using.
In the end, it isn’t Trump’s human flubs that make him look foolish. It’s his lack of humility and callous bullying of others that set him up for ridicule. When the president opens his mouth, Americans have learned to brace for either tears or jeers.
First Word pieces are short commentaries by individual members of the Houston Chronicle editorial board. While they tend to reflect the board's values, they exhibit the author's perspective rather than the institutional view. Lindenberger is deputy opinion editor.