Altersgemäß

Angesichts der Performance von Donald J. Trump vor der versammelten Militärführung war betretenes Schweigen noch die höflichste Reaktion:

The president talked at length, and his comments should have confirmed to even the most sympathetic observer that he is, as the kids say, not okay. [...]

Trump seemed quieter and more confused than usual; he is not accustomed to audiences who do not clap and react to obvious applause lines. “I’ve never walked into a room so silent before,” he said at the outset. (Hegseth had the same awkward problem earlier, waiting for laughs and applause that never came.) The president announced his participation only days ago, and he certainly seemed unprepared.

Trump started rambling right out of the gate. But first, the president channeled his inner Jeb Bush, asking the officers to clap—but, you know, only if they felt like it. [...]

Trump then wandered around, lost in the halls of history. He talked about how the Department of War was renamed in the 1950s. (It was in the late 1940s.) At one point, he mentioned that the Atomic Energy Commission had confirmed that his strike on Iran had destroyed Tehran’s nuclear program. (Iran still has a nuclear program, and the AEC hasn’t existed since the mid-’70s.) He whined about the Gulf of America and how he beat the Associated Press in court on the issue. (The case is still ongoing.) The Israeli-Palestinian conflict? I said—he did not identify to whom—How long have you been fighting? Three thousand years, sir. That’s a long time. But we got it, I think, settled.

He added later: War is very strange. Indeed.

And so it went, as Trump recycled old rally speeches, full of his usual grievances, lies, and misrepresentations; his obsessions with former Presidents Joe Biden and Barack Obama; and his sour disappointment in the Nobel Prize committee. (They’ll give it to some guy that didn’t do a damn thing, he said.) He congratulated himself on tariffs, noting that the money could buy a lot of battleships, to use an old term. And come to think of it, he said, maybe America should build battleships again, from steel, not that papier-mâché and aluminum stuff the Navy is apparently using now: Aluminum that melts if it looks at a missile coming at it. It starts melting as the missile is about two miles away.

Der Vizepräsident fühlte sich bereits einige Wochen vorher zu einem beruhigenden Interview genötigt (And if, God forbid, there’s a terrible tragedy, I can’t think of better on-the-job training than what I’ve gotten over the last 200 days). Oder, wie es der königliche Leibarzt auszudrücken beliebt:

President Donald J. Trump remains in exceptional health, exhibiting strong cardiovascular, pulmonary, neurological, and physical performance.