The Art of the Keel

By Olivia Nuzzi

... It’s not as though Trump could be expected to deliver a sober statement assessing where he’d gone wrong and apologizing to everyone his decisions had harmed. Yet he had to speak, and at times, as he did, it felt like the exercise was a form of catharsis, as if the way in which he spoke — not the specific words he said, but the machine gun stream of consciousness, the off script riffing — was a way for him to work through his frustrations about this entire self-made crisis ...

Members of his administration—Mike Pence, Mike Pompeo, Jared Kushner, Kellyanne Conway, John Bolton, Elaine Chao, and others—looked on. They stood off to the side, as far away as possible from the reporters and cameras, applauding like we were at some kind of hometown game ...

... This was ostensibly a speech about the reopening of the government, but it served more as an informercial for the supposed merits of a southern border wall that Trump seems less likely to get today than at perhaps any other point in his presidency ...

As the press shouted questions about the shutdown and about the other big news of the day — the arrest and indictment of Roger Stone, Trump’s friend and adviser of more than 40 years — Trump walked through the door and back into the Oval Office without another word.

http://nymag.com/intelligencer/2019/01/donald-trumps-speech-announcing-the-end-of-the-shutdown.html