| | | Why aren't there competent speech writers that prevent President Trump's gaffes?
David W. Rudlin, Novelist, corporate poo bah, foodaholic, political junkie.
There are. He doesn’t use them.
Unlike any recent president, Trump doesn’t have a head speechwriter or even a writing team. He lets anyone who’s willing to to draft something do a pass of whatever section they care to. As a result there’s rarely an overarching theme that connects all of the different elements. It’s just a collection of short essays penned by people with an agenda to push.
But it gets worse. The key to any great speech is knowing what you want to say. Sounds simple, but it’s not. And outside of a few angry slogans, Trump has no core principles or values that could shape his speech. Instead he has a collection of often conflicting viewpoints with only “I’m the greatest” and “it’s all the fault of X” as recurring themes.
Look at his July 4 “Salute to America” speech. Some said it sounded like a Wikipedia page — albeit a bit confused about the advent of air travel. Another said it sounded like a homework assignment submitted by a below-average student. Either way, what did you think it was trying to say? Underneath the quick view of American history, what was the message?
If there was one, it was “America always kicks ass.” A bit jingoistic and inappropriate for my taste, but if that was the brief, a team of writers could have put together a story of America’s military triumphs.
A better team would have expanded the idea to talk about things like the Marshall Plan, which didn’t involve killing anyone and is considered one of the most enlightened things America has ever done.
A still better team would have talked about about triumphs over disease and ignorance and sexism and… you get the drift.
But it all comes back to knowing what you want to talk about.
And Trump doesn’t.
As others have noted, usually Trump ignores the printed text, preferring to talk about whatever is passing through his mind at the moment. On July 4, and in the State of the Union speeches, he rarely ad libbed. While his delivery was awful, the speech we heard was pretty much the speech that was written. So its weakness was in the preparation, not the performance.
As for the “airports” and “ramming the ramparts” nonsense: the teleprompter did NOT break down. He did NOT know the speech so well he carried on without it. (If that were true it meant the approved speech said control of the airports was critical to winning the Revolutionary War.) He screwed up, plain and simple.
It happens. Perhaps to him more than most, as his issues with dementia and speech are getting worse. I think if he said, “yeah, I blew that one — but it was a pretty funny mistake, you gotta admit” it would all be over before the sun set.
But that’s not how Trump rolls.
Edward Adamchek
17h ago · 29 upvotes
That is the trap of ego; if Trump cannot simply laugh at himself (and we know he’s utterly incapable of that), he has to either defend the “fact” that Revolutionary War airports were so essential to the war effort, and that without “rampart ramming,” America’s plight would have worsened, or he must blame the foolishness on what? The rain? The TelePrompTer?
I’ve sadly had enough contact with narcissistic bullies to know that they are constantly in need of someone, something to blame for their own mistakes. I worked with a consultant who was responsible for writing the final draft of a report for a physician investors’ group, comprising the overview of the GNYMA. I supplied him with all necessary info (and then some). His final draft omitted mention of King’s County in one of 5 different areas in which borough & County breakdowns were necessary; of course, he blamed me for his omission, but when asked how King’s County appeared in the other 4 synopses, and was only deleted from the 5th, well, crickets. A “Trump moment. |
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