Wednesday, January 10, 2018

President Trump, bipartisan meeting to discuss DACA and immigration reform

Roger Simon, (linked at Instapundit) says the video shows that Trump is the grownup in the room. He also says he thinks Trump allowed media most likely to disprove author Wolff's description of his behavior in meetings.

William Jacobson at Legal Insurrection says after watching he hears that amnesty train a comin'. 

Scott Greer at Daily Caller says there is no cause to worry about Trump betraying his promises, that Trump's words about a "bill of love" and apparent support for a clean amnesty may have been just him rambling and not a sign he was conceding. 

Neil Munro at Breitbart says Trump's reality-like tv show exposes Democrat weakness and GOP unity in amnesty fight.

Sundance at The Treehouse simply introduces the video noting that Trump surprised the media by allowing them to record the meeting.

I say, get a load of those sconces. Brass eagle bases with upward spread wings holding frosted glass orbs. They have kind of an art deco look to them, mixed with a touch of Nazi Germany, classy and scary, intriguing, attractive and off-putting all the same time.

And the voices of other politicians are annoying. 10, on a scale of 1 to 10. Chuck Grassley particularly. I can really do without the pontificating as if reading from Gospel as if I hadn't read that already. Blah blah blah, now in crescendo, "by no fault of their own." Oh, do, put a lid on it already. Does he imagine we haven't heard this same thing a million times? Before him, another woman, likewise. Trump brings new things, he brings humor and unusual thoughts that get eruptive reaction from the whole table while others simply repeat their wearisome worn out tropes. The contrast between Trump and other speakers is stark. That contrast and the sconces are the only things that are interesting. We see what Trump must deal with everyday; the mundanity of the average national-level politician. Lindsay Graham as well. They cannot make themselves interesting. And they try.

8 comments:

ricpic said...

Wow, I never would have noticed the sconces but they are striking.

As to the droning voices of your standard issue pol -- they're UNBEARABLE. For a whole host of reasons I'm too lazy to enumerate.

edutcher said...

The Honorable Mr Surber concurs, although he disagrees with Team Jacobson. His money quote, Trump doesn't need a deal.

They do"
.

More to the point, he notes the Demos are running on empty. Right now, all they have is #Resist.

How do you resist the lowest unemployment since Willie, the minority unemployment ever, a booming economy, victory on all fronts, and a big tax cut?

Chip Ahoy said...

Since they cannot make themselves interesting I'll talk about something else instead. That to me is interesting.

It was the usual haircut situation that everyone does, but the exchange has unusual affects that are observable. And it all occurs in a short time. This happened again yesterday. They just keep getting better.

The woman was new to me, I had not met her or even seen her before. I told her she looks a bit like Tina Fey, but that is only vaguely true. She is actually somewhat goth, rather dark in appearance, heavy black eyeliner top and bottom, and black clothing, and a bit standoffish, reserved, somewhat chilly in her mien. Fey is contrary to that and it opened dialog. It freed her to disagree and to talk about who other people compare her to.

She asked where I worked. And that right there means they're struggling for a handle on conversation. It's a stilted question to ask. And that invited me to discuss my situation. I told her where I used to work. She probed, and I elaborated.

I did not brag about work or my workplace. I described it. I admitted my failure there, my shortcomings, how I was not a natural fit. I did not belong there. How I differed in personality from the type that does fit and thrives there. Then I explained how I thrived. How my success was different from how success is usually measured. What my experience was. How I was perceived as a bit odd. I described the things that made me feel great, where my talents that didn't fit were recognized how they were rewarded there in the ways that were possible apart from the usual rewards of advancement.

Chip Ahoy said...

I told her about my Egyptian frescos that they bought. I told her the coloring book story with its full-circle element that loops a clear childhood memory with the (then) present, and with its satisfying postscript, the posters for their employee club activities that were plastered all over the buildings, and about winning the Halloween team costume contest, and the interpreting jobs they gave me to do, and writing about all those things in their newsletter so that everybody who worked there knew me fairly intimately. I told her about the times they cried. The notes they left on my desk after items in the newsletter appeared. What they wrote to me, all of them, hundreds of the them, when I was put on leave and they expected I would soon die, they said things they wanted me to know before I passed, such that my parents couldn't even handle it emotionally. They could not get through reading them to me. They are too touching. Too intimate. Too revealing.

This discussion extended my haircut. She became perfectionist in details, took extra steps to stretch out my time in the chair, re-blended the cuts to my hair, applied hot lather to my neck to shave with a knife, brought out the vibrator to massage my back, to keep the discussion going.

By the end, wrapping up, she is holding my arm out of the chair, escorting me closely to the front, leaning in to whisper her last few words, urging me to take her card and ask for her when I return. While the other women stop what they're doing, stop their own haircuts to thank me for ordering them pizza. Women from the other side are on tip-toe to address me over the wall, interrupting their own work to acknowledge me leaving, to say that was thoughtful. Every woman in the whole place did this upon leaving, three at once in the final moments. Then three more at the desk all at once, three young women looking me straight in the eyes and saying "thank you."

Any observer going into the place would access these women as aloof, or isolated, or satisfied within their own spaces, but my experience is different.

Moral: buy a pizza to be delivered to coincide with your haircut. It will change your interactive life. When asked about your job, answer about your emotions instead, with your job as framework, and put it all in there, the happiness, the sadness, the failures and the successes, the extremes of the experience. Make it real and delivered straightforwardly. Food and emotion are the ways to the hearts of women.

AllenS said...

I wonder if Trump has ever had a haircut.

Methadras said...

this slavish sympathy for foreign children and how got here has to stop. I don't think Trump is going to fall in line here. He's giving Democrats the rope they want to hang themselves with.

Fr Martin Fox said...

I watched the entire video on C-SPAN. I agree, he probably did this to rebut the "crazy" talk.

That said, I thought the President handled the meeting oddly for someone who is supposed to be a great negotiator; but then, I am not a great negotiator, so maybe I missed the nuance.

Several times he seemed to say he'd go for a bill that solely fixed the DACA problem, while relegating the other stuff he says he wants to "phase 2." That was clearly what the Democrats wanted, and President Trump seemed awfully eager to agree. Then his fellow Republicans interject, oh, but what about the wall, chain migration," and then the President would say, oh yes, it has to include the wall, and so forth. But then he'd go back to sure, phase one, phase two.

Maybe there is some shrewdness there; but it also looks like he's not paying attention to the details.

About the sconces: a lot of architecture in D.C. looks like stuff Albert Speer would love. It was all in that period when FDR and his crowd were looking enviously at how decisive Mussolini was able to be.

edutcher said...

Something about lulling them into a false sense of security.

And Roosevelt had a lot more in common with the Fascists (all of them) than most people probably want to think about.