It’s been a while since former president Donald Trump finally left the White House and our 4-year long national nightmare finally came to an end. Since being banned on Twitter, however, the world has been spared most of the Orange One’s ramblings, and to be honest, I kinda miss it.
Of course, not everything Trump says should be repeated: after all, it’s rare for a President of any country (let alone the United States) to use their speech to rally their supporters in open insurrection against their own government.
But you have to admit, there were times when Donald Trump would say something so ridiculous that even his staunchest critics would go “damn, I did not expect that!”
One of Trump’s most memorable speeches (gosh there were so many) will, perhaps, be the United Nations first-ever virtual General Assembly back in September of 2020. Set during the height of the Covid-19 pandemic, Donald Trump delivered a short, disjointed, and overall bizarre speech in one of the biggest political stages in the world. It really just made you proud to be an American /sarcasm.
Best of Trump’s Speech at the 2020 U.N. General Assembly: “The China Virus”
Trump’s speech in the U.N’s General Assembly starts off with a racist attack against China. At the time, many conservative American pundits still held on to anti-Asian beliefs that convinced them of China’s direct and allegedly malicious involvement in the creation of the coronavirus. But the best part of this racist and ignorant comment was what followed: an attempt to frame America’s early response to the pandemic as a public health triumph.
A blatant lie, one that is to be expected of Trump, but one that still raised eyebrows: will the Don not tone himself down even at the midst of a global health crisis that has claimed thousands of lives? Nope! Donald Trump completely sidestepped the fact that the United States was one of the countries that was worst hit by the coronavirus, and that the Federal response under his directive was, for lack of a better term, a shit-show, an unmitigated failure that resulted in the death of over half a million Americans, the highest mortality rate amongst advanced markets around the world.
Despite this, Donald Trump reassured the General Assembly by saying that America will “defeat the virus…and usher in a new era of unprecedented prosperity, cooperation, and peace.” Hey, you gotta give him points for staying on-brand as a delusional sociopath.
Best of Trump’s Speech at the 2020 U.N. General Assembly: “Hold China Accountable”
Former-President (god I love saying that) Trump also said that: “We must hold accountable the nation which unleashed this plague onto the world: China” and reminded the international body of how the Chinese government allowed the virus to escape their borders and infect the rest of the world (along with the baseless accusation that the WHO is “virtually controlled by China”).
Here’s the thing: yes, the Chinese government should be held accountable for their lack of transparency in the early days of the pandemic, not to mention holding them accountable for flat-out lying about human-to-human transmission of the virus, a fact that could have saved lives from the get-go. However, this call for accountability rings hollow when the former-President (it just sounds so good to say) refuses to acknowledge the failure of his administration to control the virus within his own country’s borders, and how his administration –himself included –facilitated the lethality of the virus by downplaying its seriousness at the onset of the pandemic and then continuously spreading false information about it.
Let’s face it: the Trump administration failed the American people when it failed to mobilize federal government resources to curb infection and disregarded professional medical experts in favor of political talking heads who did nothing but give false reassurances to diehard Trump supporters.
Trump’s Speech at the 2020 U.N. General Assembly: A Last-Ditch Attempt at Sounding Relevant
In just a span of 2 months, the Biden administration managed to hit its vaccination targets early, eyeing a fully vaccinated America by the end of 2021. Ambitious, but if early vaccination rates are to be believed, it’s a goal that is achievable. Funny how things work out when you have a President that wants to work instead of rant on Twitter.
Trump’s speech at U.N. General Assembly was a last-ditch attempt at not just relevancy, but competency, both of which he failed at (it was so bad it apparently put a few people to sleep). This is because his entire career as President was marred by incompetence, arrogance, human rights violations, and just straight-up being an asshole. Biden’s work now is not just to ensure the safety of America’s public health, but also the restoration of our country’s positive image on the international stage.
