Later today former President George W. Bush and Laura Bush will join President Obama and Vice President Biden in Dallas to address the nation about the recent events in Dallas, and Baton Rouge, and Minneapolis. I would expect and hope Obama to be thoughtful and eloquent.  I would expect President Bush to be sincere and big-hearted.

Hillary spoke in Philadelphia before the African Methodist Episcopal Convention on the night of the shootings in Dallas. She could have easily cancelled the event, but she recognized it as a chance to address recent events in a positive way. Her speech wasn’t great.  Someone had half a day to write it. She didn’t have much time to rehearse it. And she’s not a natural performer. But, it was thoughtful and generous, and its only goal was to ameliorate the situation, speaking both of black lives and police lives.

And, that is true of almost every person who has appeared in the media in the last 72 hours to try to make sense of things. Except for the Republican nominee for President of the United States.

Trump made his first public appearance since Dallas yesterday.  The speech is here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K4LxLqsnJFg

Most of it is about veterans affairs, which was the scheduled topic. His remarks on Dallas, Baton Rouge, and Minneapolis run from 12:45 to around 20:00.

His speech is right out of 1969. Nixon or Wallace or Strom Thurmond could have read this verbatim.  In fact, I’m still doing web searches, because my guess is that they are recycling one of Wallace or Nixon’s old speeches.

Look, as I’ve written before, Trump is a jagoff. And, if elected, he’ll be deposed in a military coup. But, this speech was deplorable in its embrace of racially charged code words and phrases at a time when people of all colors are working to come together.

He delivered the speech from a teleprompter, which means it was calculated and planned and not just the off-the-cuff ravings of a deranged man. Reuters this morning reports polling that shows Trump significantly underperforming with white men who trend conservative. He’s trailing Mitt Romney’s support with this group by 20 points. I don’t think it’s an accident that Trump is trying to use Dallas to push up his numbers with conservative white men.

I think conservative white men are smarter than that.

How dangerous was the speech?

The speech is entirely demagogic, ginning up the issue of violence against cops to an existential threat to the nation when everyone else is trying to deescalate. He never says the words “black” or “African American” or “minority” or in any way acknowledges that there is a law enforcement issue in black communities. If you Google videos of racist politicians like Wallace or John Stennis or Richard Russell they at least go through considerable effort to try to explain why segregation is a win win for whites and blacks. Trump doesn’t even try.

If you want to be president, you have to inspire hope and convey optimism at times when the country most needs it.  Here are some of Trump’s more inspirational and optimistic quotes from yesterday:

• “The attack on the Dallas police is an attack on our country.” (It’s not, but let’s suggest a moral equivalence with Isis because I want to make white people angry and fearful.)

• “America’s police are what separate us from total chaos and the destruction of our country as we know it?” (The destruction not by Isis, but by blacks, but maybe Isis, too. Anyhow, white guys, just be angry.)

• “Politicians and activists who seek to remove police or policing from a community are hurting the poorest and most vulnerable” people.” (He’s just making stuff up.)

• “Our inner cities are rife with crime.” (Yes, and “The Bronx is burning”. There are crime problems in urban areas. And suburban areas and even rural states like Vermont and West Virginia where drugs are a major problem. “Inner cities” is a Seventies-Times-Square-black-drug-dealer-gay-porn-crack-whore-liberals-soft-on-crime code phrase. I’m writing this from Manhattan. In every way the “inner city” of New York City. Our biggest problem is that families making less than $600,000 a year increasingly can’t afford the rent. The geographic center of NYC is Bushwick, Brooklyn. Which is predominately a Latino neighborhood. With crime trending down. And artists moving into loft spaces. The population center of New York is Maspeth, Queens, which is largely a white neighborhood.)

• He mentions “brutal drug cartels.” Which, yes, are a problem. But, not the problem in Dallas, or Baton Rouge, or Minneapolis.

• Just in case anyone misses that he’s running as George Wallace, he suggests that police are being treated just like veterans returning from Vietnam. (“The Communists are laughing at us! They are laughing!”)

At 17:20 of the clip, he talks about how too many people are living in fear.

Then, at 17:47, he says, “We must maintain law and order at the highest level –100 percent –or we will cease to have a country.”

Hey, we have nothing to fear, but fear itself.

And, he still has the habit of saying, “Thank you”, “Thank You” when people clap during his speeches. Because while he’s running as a racist, he’s really a world-historical narcissist.