The way to evaluate a political speech is not as a pundit or a partisan, but as a literary critic, to examine how the rhetoric fits the situation: what the moment calls for: gravitas or transcendence, humility or defiance? Do the speaker's words respond to the call of history?
Donald J. Trump's 33-minute speech in the lobby of Trump Tower on Friday was as momentous as it was bizarre: a former president who had come close to becoming his party's nominee for three consecutive terms only to be convicted of 34 felonies. The fact that nothing quite like it has ever happened before is enough to ensure that the speech will go down in the history of American political discourse.
But as a script and a performance, this was kind of boring. Trump is not a methodical speaker or a logical constructor of arguments. He deviates from the script at hand to improvise, free-associate or repeat himself. He did a little of that on Friday, but in a more subdued manner. The matter was also strangely flat, a rehash of the trial with a few hints of larger political stakes.
The persona Trump projected on Friday was that of a disgruntled New York businessman, a throwback to the pre-MAGA era. He didn't sound like a candidate in campaign mode. The flamboyant populism he brings to his rallies — the mix of piety and profanity that gets the crowds going — was largely absent.
Indeed, he begins and ends with familiar tropes and themes, painting a bleak picture of an America invaded by foreigners (some of whom speak languages ”never heard of”), decadent and crime-ridden. He portrayed his legal troubles as attacks on the Constitution and used religious imagery to describe what happened in his courtroom; one witness was “literally crucified” by the judge, Juan Marchan. “He looks like an angel, but he's the devil.”
As a longtime journalist (and lifelong pedant), I don't think anyone literally He was crucified. And as a student of Renaissance love poetry, I find myself pondering Trump's oddly tender portrayal of a “very conflicted” judge as “very sweet and gentle.” Citizens searching for campaign issues might find something of a cliché in the conclusion, conjuring images of Venezuelas and Congolese marching out of prisons and psychiatric hospitals onto American streets, Little League fields flooded with migrant camps, and “terrorists in record numbers” swarming the nation.
The invasion and crucifixion were the two events that capped it all. They were sandwiched between a nearly 30-minute quasi-courtroom argument in which Trump delved into the minutiae of the prosecution's case. Most of what Trump said after the hearing was a restatement of what he would have said during the trial if he had testified, which he claimed he wanted to do.
In front of the cameras and without oath, he tried to adhere to Judge Marchan's gag order, avoiding naming names when speaking about his former lawyer Michael Cohen, former Trump Organization CFO Allen Weisselberg, or the angelic-devilish judge himself.
Trump said nothing about sex and very little about money, taking the tabloid element out of the case. He sounded less like a martyr and more like a driver trying to avoid a traffic ticket by claiming he did nothing wrong, that other cars were going just as fast, and that the authorities had bigger problems. “Most of the people in this room have non-disclosure agreements with their companies,” he said. It's a claim that's hard to fact-check, but it was probably true in that room. He noted that there was a machete attack at a Midtown McDonald's on the day of the sentencing. “Crime is rampant in New York,” he said, but District Attorney Alvin Bragg (who he mentioned by name) had specifically targeted him for punishment.
There was plenty of legal spinach, but not much red meat. But Trump's supporters brought their own. He didn't need to rile up his supporters; the jury riled up on his behalf, just like they did with his acquittal. While the former president complained about a “rigged” process and interpreted the meaning of the word “legal costs,” right-wing social media erupted with upside-down flags, predictions of civil war, and declarations of the end of the American Republic.
The incendiary, inflammatory rhetoric of outrage, messianism and dark warnings was absent from the speech because they are ubiquitous and part of the air we all breathe. In that respect, Friday was just a normal day in America in 2024. Trump didn't actually need to say anything.
