Trump predictions?

Last updated on: February 28, 2017 at 10:08 pm by Jane the Actuary

Trump predictions? 2017-02-28T22:08:38-06:00 Jane the Actuary

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Yeah, let’s play this game: what will Trump say tonight?

In fact, let’s do this in two parts, though it might be a bit too late. Anyone who reads this before Trump’s address, give us your best guesses about what he’ll say. Then, afterwards, I invite readers to collectively score the guesses and see who wins.

Wins what? Don’t know. Don’t have many prizes to give away. The satisfaction of being correct, mostly.

Update:

Yeah, don’t you want to ask the man who spoke tonight, “who are you and what have you done with the president?”

He’s tried to sound “presidential” in the past, but this was the first time that he made it past the first couple sentences. To be sure, it was a low bar (and I kept wondering if someone spiked his drink, to keep him subdued), but he cleared it in a way I’d never seen before. Yes, he (presumably) didn’t write his own speech, but it sounded as if he engaged a professional speechwriter and, well, his willingness to deliver these particular words, in this particular fashion, matters.

To be sure, he didn’t look presidential. He deviated from his blue suit & red tie, but the dark suit and blue striped tie, paired with a too-tight collar on the shirt, just made his head look, well, neckless, and huuuge, and more like a photoshopped head in a silly GIF than his actual head. But anyway, if you looked away periodically, you could almost believe you aren’t living in a reality TV show.

He started with a condemnation of the JCC threats, the cemetery vandalism, and the KC shooting. He talked about unity, and “renewal of the American spirit” and more unity. He talked about immigration enforcement, and a merit-based immigration system, and removing criminals, but did imply that “immigration reform” would mean something more than just enforcement. He listed companies that have announced new investments, he promised a new infrastructure program. He pledged to protect the country from Radical Islamic Terrorism (pronounced deliberately) but then threw in comments that ISIS is killing Moozlims (how he pronounced the word) and Christians, and that we’ll partner with Muslims. He promised a “repeal and replace” but with specific pledges: pre-existing condition protection, stable transition for exchange users, help with purchasing, provide money for Medicaid, and a pledge to “bring down the artificially high cost of drugs.” For good measure, he promised affordable child care, paid family leave, school choice, breaking the cycle of violence in cities, an end to the defense sequester, and threw in that NATO and other allies were beginning to meet their obligations. And he defended the raid in Yemen and praised the Marine who lost his life with applause so long I started to wonder if it would end.

So, yes, at times the speech wandered into that sort of annoying laundry-list sort of SOTU. And there wasn’t one single big surprise, or new proposal. The surprise was just the continuous normality of the thing.

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