I’d Cast My Vote for Trump’s Speechwriter

On his Monday evening radio program, Mark Levin spoke of Donald Trump’s foreign policy/immigration speech. He said: “Trump gave a pretty good speech today and people ought to listen to it. When he’s focused – when he’s on message – and when he says things that most of us agree with, we ought to acknowledge that – if we’re going to be intellectually honest.”

This may be the first time I’ve kind of disagreed with Mark. I, like Mark and many true conservatives who haven’t yet partaken of the Trump Kool-Aid, thought it was a great speech – probably the best he’s done. But this wasn’t a Trump speech. It was measured and well thought out, lacking (most of) the usual bombast – a speech I personally don’t believe Trump could write himself. And that’s my problem. I’m not sure this is Trump’s message – at least not consistently.

We’ve all heard Trump speak extemporaneously and it’s not pretty. It used to be effective, but now it’s just tiresome and repetitive. But lately he has confined himself, for the most part, to reading teleprompter speeches – which is much better for him.

However, it is painfully obvious when he strays from the prompter. He repeats himself – he overemphasizes his statements to the point where they sound cartoonish. He then either run’s out of exclamations or realizes he’s strayed and it’s back on the teleprompter.

It’s also obvious that he doesn’t write his speeches – at least not this one. Nor does it appear that’s he’s read them before they are displayed on the prompters. That being said – I would still rather see him staring at the prompter than going off on some over-accentuated diatribe which invariably ends in “believe me.”

Regarding ISIS and the instability in the Middle East – Trump’s speechwriter laid out the timeline from the start of the Obama administration to today, citing every major recent terrorist attack and going through the disastrous decisions Obama and Hillary made to cause the instability. Very effective.

The speechwriter’s use of the juxtaposition between Reagan’s “evil empire” speech and Obama’s 2009 apology tour was very good and I’ll hand to The Donald for loosening up and delivering it well. It is apparent that Trump is more familiar with this topic, as he didn’t appear as stiff, having more natural inflection in his tone.

He (the speech writer) did a masterful job tying Hillary’s bad leadership and judgment, clarifying Trump’s insistence that Obama and Clinton were the founders of ISIS. Trump said: “With one episode of bad judgment after another, Hillary Clinton’s policies launched ISIS onto the world stage.” If Trump had said that from the start, it never would have been fodder for the left.

Trump’s line about ending the era of nation building struck a cord as the crowd erupted. This is something we Constitutional conservatives have advocated against for a long time.

Finally, Trump’s speech segued into immigration – that which brought him to the dance originally. He was going along swimmingly until he got to the principles which will govern his administration regarding the screening of immigrants. He broke from the text and said “we will be tough – and we will be even extreme.”

And you lost me. There’s the Trump I know. People want to know you will be tough and competent and thorough – not extreme. Someone needs to get to him and tell him to knock off the “extreme” crap. His crowds may love it, but it won’t play well anywhere else – not with reasonable people.

I agree with almost everything Trump said in his speech. The only time I cringed was when Trump was Trump – snapping me back to reality.

And that’s where I am at present. I liked the speech. If I had the talent to speech-write, I would have written something virtually identical. If I were advising Trump (that’s a laugh), I would tell him to come out sooner than later and admit that he gets carried away with the bombast, but that he believes in and subscribes to all the policies laid out in this speech. Then commit the policies (verbatim) to memory and keep repeating them.

That, or step down and suggest his speech writer run in his stead. I’d vote for that guy. Maybe it’s Ted Cruz – ghost writing.