3-5-25

I don’t know about you but I watched the full speech given by Trump last night to

the joint session of the House and Senate…..it was an epic speech, and marked the

5 th time he has delivered such a speech to Congress….it was also the longest

speech ever by a President from the floor of the House and ran almost a full two

hours……think about that….he’s only been in office a little over a month but it

took two hours to recite all things that have been done in that short amount of

time….but as I watched I could not help but remember the last time a President

gave such a speech….it was Joe Biden exactly one year and three days ago….the

contrast between the two was stark….I remember years ago when I was a kid my

Dad was still in the Army and we were stationed in London, England…..we took a

trip to the main continent of Europe and went to West Berlin…..I have distinct

memories of standing on the platform at Checkpoint Charlie and looking over the

Berlin Wall into East Berlin and then turning around to look back into West

Berlin….it was like going from a black-and-white movie to a vibrant technicolor

big screen I-max movie…..one was drab and fretful, the other was vibrant and full

of life…..and that my friends is exactly what it was like to watch Joe Biden speak a

year ago and now compare that to Donald Trump……drab and dreary and full of

threats, versus optimism and hope and affirmation……

So, I looked back in the Rightside archives to see what my thoughts were in the

aftermath of last years speech….. maybe I’m also a glutton for punishment, but I

thought it was an important exercise in comparison…..Whether or not Biden ever

gave a “good speech” is really dependent on your own political views…it’s hard to

be a conservative pundit and find last year’s Biden speech to be a good one….if I

just took it on policy points alone I would have to say that Biden’s last speech was

an epic fail….but then, I’m not a liberal progressive or a partisan Democrat….for

the left side of the aisle Biden’s last speech was meat and potatoes….but as

someone who views things from the right side it was served up like so much

Pablum, just bland hooey and leftist talking points…..

But that was the content…..and let’s be honest, the last State of the Union address

by Joe Biden was not at all about his talking points…..the world was not waiting

with baited breath to hear what he had to say….the world was on the edge of its

proverbial seat back then for the simple reason that we wanted to know if he would

be able to get through the hour without falling down…..The level of relief on the

Democrats faces as he stepped away from the lectern was not based in feeling

strong about the policies and positions he espoused….not at all…they were just

relieved that his brain didn’t malfunction in mid-sentence and that he knew how to

step away from the podium at the end…..in that regard the White House staff and

whoever juiced him up for the speech in March of 2024 were the winners…..

Contrast that with last night’s speech by Trump….he came on at 9pm eastern time

and spoke for nearly two hours nonstop….he had facts, figures, and he

remembered names….he was relaxed and even cracked jokes and delivered some

zingers that were obviously not on his teleprompter….this was also at the end of a

long full day….one in which he didn’t shy away from other appearances, or put a

lid on the day at lunchtime so he could prepare himself…..Trump stamina versus

Biden stamina are polar opposites……

But there was something else about the Biden speech last year that I have to

address…..I can talk all day about how much I disagree with Biden’s talking

points…..but something that no one can deny with any shred of honesty is that he

was a horrible public speaker…..in that State of the Union address in March ’24

Biden spent the entire hour yelling at America….literally yelling, shaking his fists

at times, and scrunching up his face like he was having a complete moment of

rage…..look at the photoshots and video clips and you could imagine him yelling

at those darn neighbor kids to get off his grass!.....the State of the Union is not

meant to be an accusation, or a blame game…..the platform given to the President

is meant to rally the troops and gather support for measures he believes are

working, to make a report to the nation…..Biden and his handlers missed that

part….they chose to go down the route of browbeating anyone who dares to

differ….for a man who claimed to be the great uniter Joe Biden just gave us one of

the most rancorously divisive speeches I’ve ever seen……

Again, contrast that with Trump…..he wasn’t afraid to call people out, but he did it

with sarcasm and wit…..and he spent a great deal of his time affirming

people…..how many people sat in the gallery to hear their names called? One

young man, a brain cancer survivor was honored with a Secret Service badge (keep

in mind that also affirmed the Secret Service)….another was told that he will be

going to West Point….moms, and athletes, and law enforcement officers, and good

hardworking folks, one of which was from right here in Alabama, were

encouraged, recognized and loved on…..what a stark stark difference…..

Because a speech, a good speech, is as much about tone and delivery as it is about

content…..you can have the best content and still lull your audience to sleep….you

can have the greatest diction and resonating voice, but if your content is lacking

and your timing is off the speech can still be a failure….you can also claim, as

Biden did last year, that everything was going great and still make people feel like

they were being scolded….Joe Biden’s speech writers may have put together a

litany of potentially strong liberal talking points but the man they wrote it for has

no clue how to engage with his audience…..I’m a fan of speeches….I’ve said

before that there are great speeches that I love to read or re-watch….some are real

and some are fictional but they all have the same capacity for not just informing

but for identifying with the folks that are hearing it…..a good speech is about being

able to deliver words that go beyond just being mere words…..they become a

clarion call, or a call to arms, or a shot heard ‘round the world, not because they

were just pretty words……but because they were delivered in such a way that

made people want to engage the topic….they hit not just the mind, but the heart….

Do you remember the classic 1996 movie “Independence Day”?.....it was one of

those science fiction save-the-world movies but it didn’t roll off into some kind of

zombie apocalypse with people slipping off into depravity….it was a movie that

made you glad to be an American and gave us the sense that we could fight off a

bear with a switch…..it turns out the movie was originally intended to be called

“Doomsday” but the screenwriters didn’t want that to be the message….they knew

that the wording of the title was key so they chose a better set of words…..but they

needed to convince the studio bosses….so they added the phrase “independence

day” to the end of an epic speech delivered by actor Bill Pullman who was playing

the President of the United States….Pullman himself researched great speeches of

history and knew that delivery was important…..screenwriter Dean Devlin said

later that he wrote the speech for Pullman’s character in the movie….a speech that

was meant to rally, encourage and inspire….but he said when Pullman delivered it

they were still caught off guard…..he said, “none of us were prepared for it until

his first rehearsal, and then we were just staring in awe and wonder”…..In the

movie Pullman, playing the President stood in front of a tired, beleaguered and

ragtag group of Americans who were trying to figure out how to fight back against

an invasion of advanced aliens who had already laid waste to much of the

world….he stood up on a platform and began somewhat quietly and then his words

grew in their intensity….the audience was riveted….he said what they needed to

hear….he delivered it not just in words, but in tone and timing…..he said,

"…. should we win the day, the Fourth of July will no longer be known as an

American holiday, but as the day the world declared in one voice: 'We will not go

quietly into the night! We will not vanish without a fight! We're going to live on!

We're going to survive!' Today we celebrate our Independence Day!"

The studio bosses heard the speech and the movie name was changed….it went

from “Doomsday” to “Independence Day” because the speech was delivered so

well…..was it a fictional speech? Sure….so what?.....I would still bet that most of

you who saw that movie for the first time were ready to whip some aliens with a

big stick…..

So what’s in a speech?.....a good speech is about far more than just words…..a

good speech is about delivery as much as content….a good speech moves the

hearts and minds in unison….a good speech has words that resonate, tone that

invites the listener in, stories that identify with the audience, and timing that hits

the mark at the right moment…..

In that regard, Joe Biden’s last State of the Union was one of the most epic failures

ever conjured up before a live audience…..but last night Donald Trump spoke one

for the ages and the only thing missing was a mic drop…..

And that’s a wrap for the Rightside Way……