Docile Trump delivers farewell address
Outgoing president tells country to welcome ‘a new administration and pray for its success’
President Trump delivered his farewell address to the nation via YouTube Tuesday afternoon. (YouTube)
By Ted Cox
A noticeably toned-down and polite Donald Trump delivered his farewell address to the nation via YouTube Tuesday as the nation prepared for the inauguration of President-elect Joe Biden.
Eschewing the combative rhetoric and unsubstantiated claims that the November election was stolen from him, which led directly to the assault on the U.S. Capitol by his supporters two weeks ago, Trump instead told the nation to welcome “a new administration and pray for its success.”
Trump said, “All Americans were horrified by the assault on our Capitol. Political violence is an attack on everything we cherish as Americans. It can never be tolerated.”
Of course, Trump egged his supporters on in a speech outside the White House two weeks ago, insisted again that he’d actually won reelection, and called on his supporters to “fight” and march down Pennsylvania Avenue to the U.S. Capitol, saying he’d be joining them. He didn’t, of course, and the thwarted putsch and attack on Congress led instead to his second impeachment by the U.S. House last week on charges of incitement of insurrection, with Trump still facing another trial in the Senate after he leaves office.
“We did what we came here to do, and so much more,” Trump said, and went on to cite a laundry list of perceived achievements without allowing for any missteps.
After thanking his family and Vice President Mike Pence, Trump said, “Most of all, I want to thank the American people,” calling it “a great privilege and great honor” to serve the country.
He touted withdrawing the nation from the Paris Climate Agreement, and boasted of how the United States had become “the No. 1 producer of oil and national gas” in the world, “by far.” But of course he made no mention of climate change or pollution.
He claimed to have reduced poverty, but statistics last year found that poverty was actually reduced by the $1,200 stimulus checks in the initial coronavirus relief package and the extra $600 a week granted in unemployment benefits — which soon expired.
He persisted in calling COVID-19 the “China virus,” in an attempt to deflect blame, adding, “We grieve for every life lost” — as the national toll topped 400,000 Tuesday.
He applauded the “medical miracle” of a vaccine, claiming without evidence that any other administration might have taken three to five years to develop it.
Trump made a veiled reference to “luck, a very important word,” which appeared to refer to the bad break the pandemic — and his failure to address it forcibly and on a national scale — had handed him.
As the nation’s capital is filled with National Guard troops meant to protect Wednesday’s inauguration of President-elect Biden and Vice President-elect Kamala Harris against any renewed insurrection, Trump nonetheless rallied his supporters, without calling for any concrete action. He praised his “America first” campaign to “Make America Great Again” as “the greatest political movement in the history of our country,” and he insisted, “The movement we started is only just beginning.”
Trump threw down a gauntlet to the Biden administration, saying, “The greatest danger we face is a loss of confidence in ourselves, a loss of confidence in our national greatness.” That, however, was most recently reflected in the report delivered Monday by Trump’s so-called 1776 Commission, a counter to The New York Times’s 1619 Project on slavery and its U.S. legacy, with the commission advocating a jingoistic approach to U.S. history. Critics decried how it was released on Martin Luther King Day.
Trump also appeared to make reference to his permanent ban on Twitter with a few final remarks against “political oppression and blacklisting.”
An expected avalanche of presidential pardons had not materialized by late afternoon Tuesday, with CNN reporting that Trump had reconsidered pardons for his family and closest political associates over the weekend after being advised that they’d be counterproductive and legally ineffective, where a pardon for himself was concerned.
Trump had final words of thanks for the crowds that typically lined streets for his motorcade, saying, “It never failed to deeply move me.”
In the end, he echoed the words of Kimberly Guilfoyle at the Republican National Convention last summer, saying, “The best is yet to come.”
Trump is scheduled to leave the nation’s capital early Wednesday morning for his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida. Biden is set to take the oath of office at the U.S. Capitol at 11 a.m. Wednesday Central time.