Donald Trump's speeches in the past few months alone will arguably down as the most downright absurd that the president has ever delivered but on Thursday, he might have very well surpassed his own high standards.
The president was due to give his remarks on environmental regulation rollbacks, which will affect how many American citizens will use everyday household items like dishwashers, showers and lightbulbs as part of his National Environmental Policy Act, which will be of concern to environmental activists.
Now, we all know that Trump is renowned for rambling his way through speeches but rarely does he bring props along to visually illustrate just how bizarre and illogical some of his thoughts are. To show how the lifting of these burdens will help the average American, Trump literally had a red and blue truck on the South Lawn of the White House (no prizes for guessing what they represent) with a crane, plastered in a huge 'Trump administration' sticker, lifting three weights off the back of the red truck.
No, this isn't a scene from Idiocracy. It's something that actually happened in the United States of America in 2020...All this was before Trump even started talking and whey he did, well let's just say it was interesting.
One of his first notable topics of choice was deregulated showerheads.
We’re bringing back consumer choice in home appliances so that you can buy washers and dryers, showerheads and faucets. So showerheads — you take a shower, the water doesn’t come out. You want to wash your hands, the water doesn’t come out. So what do you do? You just stand there longer or you take a shower longer? Because my hair — I don’t know about you, but it has to be perfect. Perfect.
Just the president praising his own awful hairdo there. In addition to this, he complained that some countries (although he didn't name any) don't have a problem with water because they have 'rain.' Last time we checked the United States definitely got rain too but they clearly not enough to wash their dishes.
Trump then bizarrely claimed that by signing the Clean Water Act, he reduced farmers and construction workers to tears and added that some of these people hadn't even cried when they were born. Interesting how Trump seems to know this information. Was he at all of their births?
Trump then complains about the proverbial 'swamp' which he promised to drain in 2016 but admits that he didn't know how deep the swamp was, which is probably something he should have checked before he started draining it.
The American people know best how to run their own lives. They don’t need Washington bureaucrats controlling their every move and micromanaging their every decision. With each regulation we cut, we’re not only returning the money and the power to our citizens, we are draining the Washington swamp, and they’re not happy about it — I can tell you that. I think you know that. The swamp was deep. I just didn’t know how deep. Deeper than I thought.
Trump would invite some business owners up on to the stage but followed their speeches with another impromptu campaign rally at the White House, which he really shouldn't be doing to further scrutinise his Democratic opponent in the forthcoming election Joe Biden, who he fears will transform "our very way of life" and "destroy suburbia."
While moaning about proposals to scrap bail funds, Trump strangely starts to refer to the police as 'cops' complete with Ross from Friends hand quotation marks.
By this stage of the speech, which only lasted 45 minutes, Trump was in full-on ramble mode and seemed to be alluding to the anti-racism protests in the US but it was hard to decipher what point he was trying to make other than praising law enforcement.
At one point during the speech, Fox News (yes, Fox) had to interrupt their broadcast to fact check remarks that the president had said about Barack Obama and the previous administration.
An awkward moment occurred when Brad Little, the governor for Idaho cracked a joke and only Mike Pence laughed.
Trump then promises to deliver on many different issues in the relatively short space of time of just eight weeks, seemingly forgetting there is a pandemic happening right now.
So we have many exciting things that we’ll be announcing over the next eight weeks, I would say. Things that nobody has even contemplated, thought about, thought possible, and things that we’re going to get done and we have gotten done — and we’ve started in most cases. But it’s going to be a very exciting eight weeks, a eight weeks, like I prob- — I think, Mike, we can honestly say nobody has ever going to see eight weeks like we’re going to have.
Because we really have — we have — we’re taking on immigration, taking on education, we’re taking on so many aspects of things that people were hopelessly tied up in knots in Congress. They can’t — they’ve been working on some of these things for 25, 30 years. It wasn’t happening.
But you’ll see levels of detail, and you’ll see levels of thought that a lot of people believed very strongly we didn’t have in this country. We’re going to get things done. We’re going to get things done that they’ve wanted to see done for a long, long time.
Trump mercifully ends his speech by talking about the two trucks either side of him, adding that they are 'quite good' but admits to not knowing who had the idea and that he wants to get out of their fast.
And these trucks — this really is a great — a great little example. I don’t know who thought of this idea, but it’s actually quite, quite simple and quite good. Is that Brooke? Quite simple and quite good. I don’t love having that big sucker hanging over my head. I want to get out of here as fast as possible.
We have to say, that in terms of great White House moments this definitely wasn't one of them.