Tonight Donald Trump spoke in complete sentences, read what he was given, seemed mostly sober, and as such is being treated like the second coming of Ronald Reagan by a pundit corps desperate to change none of its behavior. If Trump is a normal president, they don’t have to! Therefore, he will be a normal president.

All I heard tonight was a collection of stuff you say to your liberal sister-in-law when you’re arguing with her about stuff you think she believes. Stuff that’s correct but also not the point, stuff that makes you sound virtuous and her sound like a pointy-headed out-of-touch nitpicker, which is the reason you construct your arguments that way in the first place.

“Law enforcement does a hard, important job and when officers die in the line of duty we should honor their sacrifice!”

Well of course, but …

“Our military should be respected!”

Sure, can we please also pay for …

“People shouldn’t be afraid of criminals, and we should enforce our own laws!”

Agreed on both counts, yet this particular …

“American jobs should come first!”

Okay like how …

That’s all this was. It was the Thanksgiving Dinner Argument, in fanfiction form, won by Trump and his sycophants in slightly more than one half of Congress. It wasn’t a plan of action and it wasn’t a budget and it wasn’t even a coherent worldview. It was fuck you. It was suck on this. It was doing what he did during the campaign, which is to make people who feel dumb be proud of how they felt by removing the need for their feelings to reflect in any way their circumstances or really reality at all.

It’s important to note that, and make the distinction between “appealing to his supporters and likely to resonate with them” without confusing that with “correct in any way or good for the economy, country or rest of the world.” Because if the immediate reactions to his speech are any indication — HE SEEMED SO PRESIDENTIAL! THE TONE IN THE ROOM WAS SO UNLIKE A METH LAB’S! — our current respectable pundits are not going to do it.

A.