In a few weird moments, Trump revealed more than he intended in the Oval Office

In a few weird moments, Trump revealed more than he intended in the Oval Office The president again seemed confused and low-energy, and his ad-libbed insults aimed at the Democrats were only semi-coherent. Meanwhile, the group gathered around him grinned and grinned in a way that didn’t exactly reassure, writes Holly Baxter - Bookmark - CommentsGo to comments Become an Independent member to bookmark this article Already a member? Log in As we approach the midterms, Trump has been making a lot of sudden “announcements” from the Oval Office intended to draw attention to his achievements, such as building a factory or — as it was today — auto-enrolling eligible children into his new “Trump accounts.” And with each announcement, the cast assembled around the desk seems to get a little stranger: an increasingly eclectic collection of people smiling encouragingly at the president as he reads from a laminated sheet of paper, printed in enormous type. Today, we opened with a lot of expected bluster about how kids with these basic savings accounts could become “rich by the time they’re 18” if they choose to put money into it and then bet on the stock market, which they could do with literally any other savings account. The situation is a little different for the set of children born in the past two years, who will have $1,000 deposited directly into their accounts and sourced from rich entrepreneurs like Michael and Susan Dell, but it’s hardly revolutionary. It is, however, technically kind of socialist. Trump seemed tired and low-energy this afternoon. He read from his script in a way that implied he was nervous about communicating without it. Its presence also implies that other people around him have advised him to keep his worst ad-libbing under control at such a delicate juncture. But of course, there was ad-libbing. There was a claim that “instead of Americans sharing in the misery of communism,” presumably under the Democrats, they’ll get to be little capitalists instead. “They say they’re not communist but their policies are communist,” Trump added, still not having defined who “they” were. Everyone in the group behind the presidential chair looked both studiously happy and slightly concerned, and nobody more than Ted Cruz, who bobbed his head and grinned maniacally at every sentence that came out of Trump’s mouth. “Mr. President, congratulations!” he said, when called to speak, in a tone that one might reserve for a kindergartner. He then added that “today is a massive day” and “I’ll tell you what’s cool — your administration designed the app!” Certainly if anyone can tell us what’s cool, then it must be Ted Cruz. And the fact that the brightest minds in the American government managed to build an app? Astonishing! Susan Dell then did a halting, painful speech about how we need to support the children, make the children rich and so on, a speech that was surpassed only in awkwardness by what happened next: “Wow, good job,” Trump said, widening his eyes, and then turned to Susan’s husband and asked: “Michael, is she thinking about running for office?” Well, you know what they say: if you want to know about a woman’s career plans, you better ask her husband! The extremely cringe moments kept on coming. “Moms and dads are going wild with QR codes!” was one of my favorite asides from the group, mainly because it sounds tantalizingly like a headline for a scaremongering article about small-town swinging. Another strong contender was when both Trump and Cruz riffed on the idea that children can now walk into McDonald’s “saying ‘I want good service, I own this company’.” This does, undeniably, paint a picture — a hellscape picture of little Trumpian brats screaming with entitlement at service staff because they technically own a single share in a large conglomerate, but still. Evocative. And then Trump gave out gold commemorative coins and pens to a bunch of kids while muttering to them about the eagle embossed on them, because why not? Seconds after playing the kindly uncle in this way, the president answered his first question from the collected press by stating that “Merrick Garland and his little group of thugs” have been “tracking my wife, my son” and that Biden was “a man who didn’t know what was going on. Possibly he did know what was going on. I think he had a mean streak. Not smart, but mean.” On Russia and the potential lab leak of plague, we were told: “They don’t say much but they say it’s under control,” and by the way, Trump added, “Today is Vladimir Putin’s birthday.” There was a long aside about Venezuela emptying their prisons into America, some vaguely disturbing stuff about how “I could have done bad things to Hillary Clinton. I could have done very bad things to Joe Biden. I could have done bad things to Barack Hussein Obama,” and a long rant about the Nobel Peace Prize, which will be announced on Friday and which Trump once again believes he should receive (“It would be a great discredit to them” if they didn’t give it to him, he added, since he “did things no one else has ever done before,” including ending wars when “no other president has ever settled any wars.”) There was also an interesting recurring theme in which both the president and his gathered brigade of sycophants noted that Democrats, including Gavin Newsom and “Adam Shifty Schiff,” have had good things to say about the Trump accounts. This was upheld as evidence among the group that the Trump accounts must be so astoundingly, earth-shatteringly brilliant that even Democrats can’t work out how to criticize them — instead of evidence that the other side might simply be a little more normal, and criticizing policies based on whether they actually disagree with them or not. The strangest moment of this press conference, however, came when Trump was asked about his hopes to turn his West Palm Beach golf club into a Camp David-style retreat for future presidents. It was a softball question, and Trump answered it with everything you’d expect: that he would like it to happen, that the military think it’s a great idea, that every president loves golf, and that “you don’t have houses nearby” or “high buildings,” and that the golf club is also “very near to the airport,” so it just makes sense. Having seemingly finished his answer, Trump paused and the melee of reporters shouting questions began again — but then the president started talking, and as everyone quietened down to hear what he was adding, we realized that he was repeating the answer, almost word for word. The thing about the West Palm golf club, he said, is “you don’t have houses,” “you don’t have high buildings looming over it, and the other advantage is it’s right next to the airport.” He seemed to have no recollection that he had just given this spiel seconds before. The press conference continued as normal and wrapped up as normal, but it was a moment that lingered in the memory. Trump has seemed frail for a while now, and his verbal sparring has become noticeably less barbed and less funny. He’s also losing coherence in his insults — really, Joe Biden is mean now, even though he’s also supposed to have been a puppet? — and revealing too much in his random sentences, such as today’s “Obama doesn’t even know why he won” the Nobel Prize. And as the president repeats himself while everyone around him nods along like he’s saying something new, Americans go to the ballots in less than four weeks. There’s a war in the Middle East and an affordability crisis. It’s astounding, really, that those might be the least of this presidency’s problems. Join our commenting forum Join thought-provoking conversations, follow other Independent readers and see their replies Comments