What Trump really said

Every incoming United States President has to say something after he has been sworn into office.

Donald Trump, the 45^th American president, is no exception. His inaugural speech is, not surprisingly, remarkably consistent with the messaging that he has been putting out since he began seeking to be president.

Speeches are simply words. Trump has always held himself up as a man of “action," and friends, family and colleagues have repeatedly noted that he is very mentally and physically restless and reactive. While he made many speeches during the campaign for presidency, these have usually been made from notes, with a considerable amount of informal improvisation in response to the audience and even to individual persons arrayed before him.

Formal speechmaking directly from a written text, on the other hand, is not something he has done all that often.

In addition, in the past he has spoken predominantly to his followers, not to the entire United States,or to the world as a whole. So, his inaugural speech afforded an opportunity to see how Trump deliberately and consciously chose to portray himself to this broader audience.

Others have analyzed Trump’s inaugural speech. Three Australian language experts did so, looking at syntax, movement and timing. They concluded that, in broad strokes, Trump’s use of short, simple sentences constitute “the sign of a demagogue or public orator,” more like a preacher than a politician – and a salesman, using techniques drawn from “marketing and advertising as well as politics”.

I’m now going to look closely at the content of the Trump speech in detail. One source of valuable information about Donald Trump is a 1983 article written for the New York Times when the 37-year-old real estate mogul was on the ascendancy, when his first wife, Ivana, was pregnant with their third child and allowed to be in charge of design for his buildings, and before the half-dozen business bankruptcies that, along with other false starts outside the business world, would mar his previously stellar business record.

The speech

“We the citizens of America have now joined a great national effort to rebuild our country and restore its promise for all our people.

Together we will determine the course of America for many, many years to come. Together we will face challenges. We will confront hardships. But we will get the job done.”

Donald Trump has never liked sharing power with anybody or excelled at doing things together with other people, unless he has been thoroughly in charge.

In fact, his business record is rife with examples of him protecting his own interests while allowing those of others to languish. If there is one theme that has run through his entire public life, it is that he hates doing what other people want him to do, and does not care much for the needs of others, especially if they conflict with his own.

One telling vignette: When the New York Times reporter visited Trump headquarters on the 26th floor of the Trump Tower on Fifth Avenue in 1983, she was shown a room with a vast table. “This was supposed to be a board room,” opined The Donald, “but what was the sense when there is only one member. We changed it to a conference room.”

“Every four years we gather on these steps to carry out the orderly and peaceful transfer of power.

And we are grateful to President Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama for the gracious aid throughout this transition. They have been magnificent, thank you.”

Relations between the outgoing president and Donald Trump have been deeply strained, to say the least.

“Today’s ceremony, however, has very special meaning because today we are not merely transferring power from one administration to another – but transferring it from Washington DC and giving it back to you the people.

For too long a small group in our nation’s capital has reaped the rewards of government while the people have borne the cost. Washington flourished but the people did not share in its wealth. Politicians prospered but the jobs left and the factories closed.

The establishment protected itself but not the citizens of our country.

Their victories have not been your victories. Their triumphs have not been your triumphs. While they have celebrated there has been little to celebrate for struggling families all across our land.”

In a spasm of revisionist frenzy, Trump here strayed into a clear falsification of the record by leaving out critical information. There are two startling omissions from these words.

First, it is widely accepted that the vaunted democracy of the United States has been transformed, over time, into a plutocracy – a government by the very rich. The hegemony of the hyper-wealthy has been documented extensively both in the media and by academics like Richard Hasen at the University of California.

It was cemented into the American political scene by the 2010 U.S. Supreme Court ruling known as Citizens United, which essentially tossed out limits on politically-motivated spending by wealthy individuals.

Second, Trump has omitted to mention the important fact that he himself is one of those plutocrats who have made it their business to “invest” time and energy into attaining wealth, political power and influence. The only difference between him and any person seeking these goals in Washington has been simply geographical; he was doing this down the road in another city – New York.

Trump gained his lofty financial status, as the 1983 New York Times article cited above points out in detail, by manipulating the letter of the law while flaunting its spirit, relentlessly focusing on deal-making that financially benefited himself alone.

“That all changes starting right here and right now because this moment is your moment. It belongs to you. It belongs to everyone gathered here today and everyone watching all across America today.

This is your day. This is your celebration. And this – the United States of America – is your country.”

Here, the freshly-minted U.S. president deviates into fantasy, the kind of demagogic fantasy that stirs up atavistic, tribal emotions in the vulnerable.

In the interconnected world we live in, no country is able to function in isolation. At a very fundamental and material level, the United States is 32.5 per cent owned by investors outside the country, with China holding about seven per cent, and Japan nearly the same amount. The reason for this is the fact that U.S. Treasury Bonds have been considered, up to now, a very good investment.

If Trump were to try and change that, the U.S. and possibly the world economy could be in serious financial jeopardy.

“What truly matters is not what party controls our government but that this government is controlled by the people.

Today, January 20 2017, will be remembered as the day the people became the rulers of this nation again. The forgotten men and women of our country will be forgotten no longer. Everyone is listening to you now.

You came by the tens of millions to become part of a historic movement – the likes of which the world has never seen before. At the centre of this movement is a crucial conviction – that a nation exists to serve its citizens.”

Ironically, these statements would apply far more to the uber-rich like Donald Trump than the average man in the street. They would also apply to the mega-corporations that incessantly lobby governments around the world for concessions that allow them to expand their profit margin.

A study by U.S. political scientist Larry Bartels show that political decision-makers were far more responsive to the opinions of rich people than middle-class people, and tended to actually reject the position of low income citizens.

The personal record of Donald Trump belies these syrupy statements. At no time in his business or political career has he demonstrated any tendency to advocate for greater participation by other American citizens in influencing government.

At one point, documented in the 1983 New York Times piece, Trump offered rooms in one of his luxury apartment buildings, the rebuilt Barbizon Plaza Hotel, as a shelter for the homeless, in what appears to have been a foray into public relations designed to help him gain municipal support for evicting rent-controlled and rent-stabilized tenants living in the hotel when he purchased it.

Despite using a variety of strong-arm tactics to evict these unprofitable tenants, he was unable to do so. The latter united and used legal aid to resist Trump’s questionable pressure tactics. To this day some of these tenants still live in low-rental apartments in the heart of downtown New York.

“Americans want great schools for their children, safe neighbourhoods for their families and good jobs for themselves. These are just and reasonable demands.

Mothers and children trapped in poverty in our inner cities, rusted out factories scattered like tombstones across the landscape of our nation.

An education system flush with cash, but which leaves our young and beautiful students deprived of all knowledge. And the crime and the gangs and the drugs which deprive people of so much unrealized potential.”

Of course these aspirations are “just and reasonable.” It’s the classical populist approach to echo a desire for “motherhood and apple pie.”

But Donald Trump’s recorded conduct paints a completely different picture. He has not always been kind to the rank and file of his employees. In fact, when you work in his business empire, you’re likely to be treated more harshly than in most other enterprises.

As for “great schools,” Trump has gone on record as intending to abolish the Department of Education and has indicated his support for “school choice,” a movement which undoubtedly appeals to his willful mentality, but has facilitated expensive private schools competing directly with publicly-funded schools for financial support, and has tended to aggravate social divisions.

And as for an educational system “flush with cash,” Trump seems to be unaware of the fact that U.S. federal government spending on public education has been less than one per cent of GDP for decades. The vast majority of funding for schools has come from states and local communities.

As for “safe neighbourhoods”… I wouldn’t hold my breath hoping that Donald Trump will identify, in any meaningful way, the factors that contribute to neighbourhood violence and crime, because he has never evinced the slightest interest in the matter beyond vague law and order, and anti-immigrant expostulations.

Based on his record, he would be entirely uninterested in, for example, the findings of a recent United Nations report on policing and urban violence, that suggested that “security is not the sole responsibility of the police, but is more an issue of good urban governance. In other words, security is a collective task of all citizens under the coordination of local authorities.”

Donald Trump has never liked being involved in anything “collective.” His glaring lack of engagement with the causes of social distress and economic challenges is here displayed at its most blatant.

Mothers and children are indeed trapped in poverty in inner cities, primarily because meaningful support systems for them are often lacking, and “good urban governance” requires public commitment. Of interest in this regard, during the Obama administration, the number of homeless veterans in the United States has been reduced by 50 per cent by a combination of actions at all levels of government, supported by citizen-based community groups.

With his relentless anti-government stance, it is likely that Trump would simply ignore such gains.

As for rusted out factories, these are the leftovers of the trend to move low-skill manufacturing jobs out of rich countries and into poor countries that pay low wages that has been going on for decades all around the world, and nowhere more aggressively than in the United States. It’s a trend that Donald Trump has in fact regularly participated in himself over many decades.

“We are one nation, and their pain is our pain, their dreams are our dreams, we share one nation, one home and one glorious destiny.

Today I take an oath of allegiance to all Americans. For many decades, we’ve enriched foreign industry at the expense of American industry, subsidized the armies of other countries, while allowing the sad depletion of our own military.

We've defended other nations’ borders while refusing to defend our own.”

Most jobs that have gone overseas from the U.S. have gone to countries where wages are astonishingly low, and working conditions are poor to horrible (and sometimes lethal). Products made in these sweatshops and offshore factory prisons have come back to the United States (and other rich countries) to be sold at far lower prices than products made domestically. American citizens have enjoyed these cheap goods in the enormous quantities at the expense of the health and even lives of impoverished workers overseas.

The U.S. arms industry has been selling (not loaning, or giving away) arms in record quantities to anybody who would buy them for decades, propping up the domestic arms industry and eliminating the transient “peace dividend” that was briefly available after the end of the Cold War.

Fifty-four per cent of the U.S. discretionary budget in 2015 was spent on the military, and the U.S. out-spends other national governments by a wide margin when it comes to weapons of war.

I live in Canada, a little bit north of the longest undefended border between two countries in the world. All I can say is that if the U.S. had not been the beneficiary of amicable relations from my country (we’ll forget about the war of 1812, which the U.S. started), defending that border would probably have bankrupted the entire U.S. economy.

And defending the border with Mexico? What, against Mexicans who seek a better life in the country where almost all the goods manufactured with cheap labour in their country end up, seeking material security and freedom from drug violence and police corruption in their own country?

Didn’t he ever read the story of the Good Samaritan when he was a kid?

“And spent trillions and trillions of dollars overseas while America’s infrastructure has fallen into disrepair and decay.

We have made other countries rich while the wealth, strength and confidence of our country has dissipated over the horizon.

One by one, shutters have closed on our factories without even a thought about the millions and millions of those who have been left behind.”

I hope that a discerning reader will have noted that so far, there has been no mention whatsoever of the corporate sector. Companies like Monsanto (oops! It’s now owned by Bayer in Germany – but heck, everybody knows it’s still a good ol’ American company), Exxon, DuPont, Eli Lilly (a favourite of the Bush family), General Foods, Walmart…

Hold it right there.

Wasn’t Walmart recently classified as the world’s largest corporation by revenue (US$482 billion and accused of displacing an estimated 400,000 American jobs between 2001 and 2013?) Americans love a bargain as much as anyone – it’s probably in the DNA of most people everywhere.

But fuelled by the myopia that afflicts many American citizens when it comes to what’s happening outside their own country, tens of millions of Americans have revelled shamelessly in the purchase of amazingly inexpensive consumer goods, goods that are less expensive than they were a decade or two ago – and only recently have they seemed to become even dimly aware of the terrible price paid by the people around the world who make them.

Oh, and by the way, the recent modest surge in bringing jobs back to the U.S. and other wealthy countries – yes, there has been a modest return of some jobs to the U.S. – has nothing to do with U.S. government policy. It has everything to do with a wrenchingly slow increase in wages in impoverished countries, and an increase in high-end, research-based manufacturing in wealthy countries.

“But that is the past and now we are looking only to the future.

We assembled here today are issuing a new decree to be heard in every city, in every foreign capital, in every hall of power – from this day on a new vision will govern our land – from this day onwards it is only going to be America first – America first!

Every decision on trade, on taxes, on immigration, on foreign affairs will be made to benefit American workers and American families. Protection will lead to great prosperity and strength. I will fight for you with every bone in my body and I will never ever let you down.

America will start winning again. America will start winning like never before.

We will bring back our jobs, we will bring back our borders, we will bring back our wealth, we will bring back our dreams. We will bring new roads and high roads and bridges and tunnels and railways all across our wonderful nation. We will get our people off welfare and back to work – rebuilding our country with American hands and American labour.”

The unreality quotient of these remarks is extremely high. The one part of the global timeline that Donald Trump scrupulously avoided mentioning is the present, where entrenched forces – including the business status quo that he represents – are firmly prepared to fight tooth and nail against change.

And then there’s a little problem of rapidly advancing technology, as well as changing human conduct in the face of such things as climate change.

Donald Trump won votes in West Virginia and Pennsylvania in the U.S. federal election because he promised to bring jobs back to the coal industry. But massive job loss in the coal industry has been the result of cheap domestic fracked gas flooding the U.S. market, coupled with major changes in technology that make workers redundant in the industry. And robotics are taking away further manufacturing jobs from other industries every day.

And as recognition of climate change grows — that is, everywhere but in Donald Trump’s mind and the minds of a few of his industry buddies — economic and scientific pressure to move away from fossil fuels in general increases on an almost daily basis.

“We will follow two simple rules – buy American and hire American.

"We will seek friendship and goodwill with the nations of the world, but we do so with the understanding that it is the right of all nations to put their own interests first. We do not seek to impose our way of life on anyone, but rather to let it shine as an example. We will shine for everyone to follow."

We will reinforce old alliances and form new ones, and untie the world against radical Islamic terrorism which we will eradicate from the face of the earth.

At the bed rock of our politics will be an allegiance to the United States. And we will discover new allegiance to each other. There is no room for prejudice.

The Bible tells us how good and pleasant it is when god’s people live together in unity. When America is united, America is totally unstoppable.”

Question: Picture 20 people standing in a room. Five people agree to “unite” and work together as much as possible. Does that mean that everybody in the room is united?

Given everything that has been said so far about the interconnectedness of the U.S. economy with the rest of the world, and in fact, it’s reliance on global trade in order to maintain its economic footprint, it is absolutely nonsensical for Donald Trump to be advocating the exact opposite kind of relationship with the world.

But it probably sounds inspiring to ill-informed and vulnerable Americans to say “we will shine for everyone to follow,” or “we will discover new allegiance to each other,” whatever that means. White citizens to black citizens? Poor citizens to rich citizens? Tall citizens to short citizens?.

It sounds so cheering to say there is “no room for prejudice.” But when these and other words come out of the mouth of an unscrupulous businessperson who has repeatedly disparaged Hispanics, Muslims and defenders of African-American rights – and whose father, an accepted participant in the Trump Empire, may have taught his son racism – they don’t really have much meaning.

Empty rhetoric rating: Extremely high.

“There is no fear, we are protected and will always be protected by the great men and women of our military and most importantly we will be protected by God."

More empty rhetoric, this time invoking the power of weapons and soldiers to defend the country, but from what? Invading armies lined up on the borders of the United States? Ranks of missiles armed and pointed towards the American heartland?

This is the kind of stuff that fascist dictators and otherwise unpopular or weakly supported politicians have thrived on forever.

Invoking God as a protector – pandering to the reflexive religiosity that lies at the heart of many American political and social structures – gains a peculiarly surreal quality coming from a man who, in his public conduct, has displayed a remarkably worldly indifference to anybody’s interest other than his own.

“Finally, we must think big and dream even bigger. As Americans, we know we live as a nation only when it is striving.”

This is an inadvertent and perhaps quite unconscious statement of intent from a hyperactive, acquisitive businessman and commercial adventurer who has constantly striven to fulfill his material ambitions. It has nothing to do with the American people as a whole.

“We will no longer accept politicians who are always complaining but never doing anything about it. The time for empty talk is over, now arrives the hour of action.”

And this is another coded statement of intent from somebody who has a professed disdain for policies as well as for other people’s rules. He is signalling his plan, in his role as U.S. president, to do things that he wants to do, without regard for the views and opinions of people who do not agree with him.

“Do not allow anyone to tell you it cannot be done. No challenge can match the heart and fight and spirit of America. We will not fail, our country will thrive and prosper again.“

This rhetorical flourish sounds like it was lifted straight out of the teachings of the Rev. Norman Vincent Peale – who Donald Trump has said was his family’s personal religious advisor.

Peale wrote the Power of Positive Thinking. Its simplistic approach to fostering optimism by repeating self-hypnotic slogans was widely criticized both during his life and after his death in 1995. Peale was criticized for “[refusing] to allow his followers to hear, speak or see any evil,” an approach that “inevitably leads to aggression and the destruction of those considered ‘negative’.” He was harshly critical of religions other than Protestant Christianity, a position Donald Trump appears to have adopted in his rhetoric.

The American politician Adlai Stevenson once quipped, “I find Saint Paul appealing and Saint Peale appalling,” after Peale declared him unfit for political life because he was divorced (a stance he appears to have softened in face of Donald Trump’s connubial history).

Peale also declared John F. Kennedy unfit for the presidency because he was a Catholic.

The brilliant musical satirist Tom Lehrer mocked Peale in the song “It Makes a Fellow Proud to Be a Soldier,” which lampoons the army’s tendency to accept all comers, no matter how ill-qualified, by characterizing Peale as a representative of “deep philosophy.”

And this is the man who has guided the spiritual development of the next President of the United States.

“We stand at the birth of a new millennium, ready to unlock the mysteries of space, to free the earth from the miseries of disease, to harvest the energies, industries and technologies of tomorrow.”

This is the one sentence in the entire speech that actually makes sense, as far as it goes. It leaves out problems like climate change, the size and continuing growth of the human population, Trump’s own threat to weaponize space, the unfortunate hegemony of the pharmaceutical industry in healthcare, the overuse of intellectual property rights laws, the over-consumption of the earth’s resources, the massive influence of corporations over social discourse, and the pesky problem of a fossil fuel industry that doesn’t want to step aside and allow sustainable energy systems to supplanted.

But it’s pretty good, as far as it goes.

"A new national pride will stir ourselves, lift our sights and heal our divisions. It’s time to remember that old wisdom our soldiers will never forget, that whether we are black or brown or white, we all bleed the same red blood of patriots."

That’s not what Donald Trump’s father taught him, as Trump Sr. refused to rent apartments to black veterans returning from the Second World War. "Not many sons have been able to escape their fathers," said Donald Trump in 1983; it’s not clear if he meant escaping Trump Sr.’s authority, or his father’s beliefs. So far, it would appear to be the former.

Back in 1983, the New York Times reporter interviewing him noted that he “prefers the vocabulary of war and sports to document his exploits.” It would appear he still loves his militaristic metaphors

“We all enjoy the same glorious freedoms and we all salute the same great American flag, and whether a child is born in the urban sprawl of Detroit or the windswept plains of Nebraska, they look at the same night sky, and dream the same dreams, and they are infused with the breath by the same Almighty Creator.

So, to all Americans in every city near and far, small and large, from mountain to mountain, from ocean to ocean – hear these words – you will never be ignored again.

Your voice, your hopes and dreams will define your American destiny. Your courage, goodness and love will forever guide us along the way.”

Honestly, I just can’t make any sense of this.

The scenic tour through the United States I can understand. It’s pure standard-issue political piffle.

But after years of engaging in self-centred, self-promoting, grasping, tax-evading and exploitative manipulation, this “pretty rough fellow when he was small,” according to his father, sent to a military school to tame his persistent obstreperousness, now senses the “goodness and love” in the hearts of his fellow citizens. He declares that the “hopes and dreams” of others will guide their “American destiny”, when most of his working life has been spent trying to shape the hopes and dreams of others to his own personal ends.

In the end, frankly, it doesn’t ring true, either psychologically or politically.

These are actually just words spoken by somebody trying to imitate a presidential style, when all his natural instincts cry out for advancing his self-interest.

You can't ignore me!

Perhaps, as the Australian linguists suggest, Donald Trump’s use of short sentences, catchy clichés, dramatic pauses and especially his arm salutes say it most clearly: “Pay attention to me! I’m important, and you people out there can’t ignore me anymore.”

The fact is, he’s right. All eyes are now on Donald Trump, and they will be as long as he is in the Oval Office.

But the task before him is no longer one of snaring a flashy real estate property, or trying to make a clever deal to save or earn more money. Now the people watching Donald Trump are eager for results that really do help them, in the course of their daily lives, and not just help him.

I believe it’s only a matter of time before Donald Trump falls into the old ways that have governed his conduct for decades. When he does so, he will take one or more egregious missteps that bring the dignity of the government of the United States of America into serious jeopardy. When that happens, things could move quickly to stem the tide of disaster.

In the meantime, we will all have to be on our guard, ready to respond intelligently, and quickly, and firmly. Donald Trump, the man who will not be ignored, may end up stirring the embers of economic, social and environmental activism that lie in the hearts of many people.

His presidency may well go down as the time that aroused complacent bystanders all over the world to take a role in restoring natural justice and sharing to the human family. We can only hope.

I didn’t bother analyzing the end of Trump’s speech – the bits about “America strong… wealthy… safe… great… God bless…” etc. etc. I can only take so much pre-fabricated pap.

Editor's Note: A line was added to a portion of President Trump's speech to complete the transcript of that statement on Thurs. Jan. 26, 2017 at 12:10 p.m. E.T.