{"id":12882,"date":"2019-02-06T17:51:59","date_gmt":"2019-02-07T01:51:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/bradblog.com\/?p=12882"},"modified":"2019-02-06T18:11:41","modified_gmt":"2019-02-07T02:11:41","slug":"dr-jekyll-and-mr-trump-a-post-sotu-analysis-bradcast-262019","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bradblog.com\/?p=12882","title":{"rendered":"‘Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Trump’ – a Post-SOTU Analysis: ‘BradCast’ 2\/6\/2019"},"content":{"rendered":"

On today’s BradCast<\/i><\/a> we attempt to make sense of last night’s State of the Union Address<\/a>. Wish us luck. [Audio link to full show follows below.<\/i>]<\/p>\n

The New York Times<\/i> described<\/a> Trump’s SOTU on Tuesday as “veer[ing] between two moods — combative and conciliatory.” Democratic minority leader Chuck Schumer described<\/a> it as “sort of like Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, and the excitement and the enthusiasm was all in the Mr. Hyde parts.”<\/p>\n

A majority of Americans who watched it, however, approved of the Trump’s remarks<\/a>, at least according to early polling weighted towards self-identified Republicans and right-leaning independents.<\/p>\n

Our two excellent guests today, award-winning opinion journalist HEATHER DIGBY PARTON<\/b> of Salon<\/a> and Hullabaloo<\/a>, and author<\/a> and political media critic ERIC BOEHLERT<\/b> formerly of ShareBlue<\/a> and Media Matters<\/a>, now a contributor for Daily Kos<\/a>, join us to make sense of both<\/i> parts (all<\/i> parts?) of Trump’s at-times disjointed, at-times collegial, and at-times aggressive remarks as they veered conversely<\/a> between out-and-out lies to something more closely resembling facts but shamefully lacking in context.<\/p>\n

Did Trump meet the bar set for him by his own White House aides who’d promised<\/a> new calls for “unity” and “bi-partisan cooperation” in his speech? Is Trump capable or even interested in that?<\/p>\n

“These State of the Unions are typically the least awful thing Trump does in any given week,” Boehlert observes, “because it’s a prepared speech, it’s poorly written, he delivers it poorly. But there are moments where he does appeal to independents. And then he goes back to the crazies.”<\/p>\n

Says Parton: “If the idea was to unify the Republicans, then yes, it obviously worked. By their measure, I think they probably did what they wanted to do. … [But] there is no President in American history who is less authentic-sounding than Donald Trump when he’s calling for unity and bipartisanship. And they know it.”<\/p>\n

Beyond those optics, we also dig into, among many other things in today’s lively, very fast-paced hour: Trump’s ridiculous threats against “ridiculous partisan investigations”; The striking image of a sea of new and veteran female Democratic Representatives dressed in suffragette white<\/a>; Nancy Pelosi’s triumphant new-again role as House Speaker; Trump’s obsessive (not to mention graphic and largely false or misleading) continuing advocacy for a southern border just days away from another potential federal government shutdown; The stunning number of important issues (from the climate crisis to gun violence to the recent record-long shutdown and much more) that Trump didn’t bother to even mention, for some reason; The misleading use of Venezuela’s ongoing political crisis as an attempt to smear “socialism” in the U.S. in advance of 2020; and Georgia Democrat Stacey Abrams’ very smart, spirited and inspiring response<\/a> to Trump’s dark, long<\/a>, and largely fact and substance-free<\/a> SOTU…<\/p>\n

CLICK TO LISTEN OR DOWNLOAD SHOW!…<\/a><\/i><\/b>
\n[audio:http:\/\/bradblog.com\/audio\/BradCast_BradFriedman_EricBoehlert-HeatherDigbyParton-PostSOTU_020619.mp3]<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

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<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

On today’s BradCast we attempt to make sense of last night’s State of the Union Address. Wish us luck. [Audio link to full show follows below.] The New York Times described Trump’s SOTU on Tuesday as “veer[ing] between two moods — combative and conciliatory.” Democratic minority leader Chuck Schumer described it as “sort of like […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"ep_exclude_from_search":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[192,135,26,89,675,333,299,479,930,969,28,14,261,477,340,300,126,204,1170,47,198,610],"tags":[],"coauthors":[],"class_list":["post-12882","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-accountability","category-afghanistan","category-brad-blog","category-media-appearance","category-bradcast","category-chuck-schumer","category-democrats","category-donald-trump","category-election-2018","category-election-2020","category-election-reform","category-fox-news","category-immigration","category-kpfk","category-nancy-pelosi","category-republicans","category-rights-and-freedoms","category-sotu","category-stacey-abrams","category-texas","category-us-house","category-venezuela","bb-type-bradcast"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bradblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12882","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bradblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bradblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bradblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bradblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=12882"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bradblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12882\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bradblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=12882"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bradblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=12882"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bradblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=12882"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bradblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcoauthors&post=12882"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}