Trump read a teleprompter for 90 long minutes. It was the State of the Union.

Yes, Donald J. Trump can stick to a teleprompter speech someone else wrote for him, throwing in only a few ad libs and generally behaving within the norms of this most scripted moment in the nation's seat of government.

But, in doing so, according to an assessment in The Atlantic, Trump managed to be boring.   Beginning on a high note of optimism about the economy, and bolstered by a long list of aspirational one-liners (each applauded and cheered at length by the Republican partisans in attendance) -- Trump, in effect, served up the dessert first.

He then turned midway in the very long speech into a dark and ugly place -- as the main course of raw meat was served up for his base.   He chose to begin the much-anticipated focus on immigration by citing the violence of the M-13 gangs.   He introduced, sitting in the gallery, the two sets of parents whose two daughters were killed by M-13 gang violence.   With all due respect to those grieving parents, this is the face of immigration Trump chose to present to a nation of immigrants?

Hardly anything he said about immigration after that came even close to balancing the narrative or the mood.  He spoke again, and by implication again and again, of the need to protect our borders and our neighborhoods, to build the Wall and increase the number of ICE agents -- all to combat the violence that, in his mind, immigrants bring to our countrty.

No where in the speech was there even a hint of the truth -- that immigrants are significantly less likely to commit crimes than are our native born citizens.

I felt enraged at Trump myself;  imagine how the second-generation immigrants sitting there in Congress must have felt.   The camera focused briefly on Joaquin Castro and on Marco Rubio -- they both looked grim.    Then he threw out what is supposed to make his whole package OK -- that the people brought here as children will be able to stay and will have a path to citizenship that will take 12 years.   But along with that:   his plan ends the diversity lottery program, requires lots of money for border security, and limits the family sponsorship only to spouses and non-adult children of someone here with a green card.   Currently it also allows parents and adult siblings.

The truth is that there was a lot of truth lacking in this speech.   Fact-checkers are hard at work today.   But it was also the things he left out.   No mention of the Mueller investigation or what it's about.   No mention that Russia hacked our 2016 election, that they continue today amping up negative messages on our social media -- including the frenzied bot campaign to "release the memo," (see yesterday's  ShrinkRap about Nune's controversial memo).

No mention of what he has ordered be done to prevent our 2018 election from being hacked (absolutely nothing, apparently).  He talked about the threat posed by North Korea, with no mention of the encouraging signs coming from even our meager diplomatic efforts there.   After a year, he finally nominated an ambassador for South Korea -- who made news just before the speech by posting an op-ed withdrawing from the nomination because of Trump's policies toward North Korea.

And then there was the surprise announcement -- for no good discernible reason -- that he will keep Guantanamo prison open indefinitely to house all the terrorists he expects to capture, apparently.   No, actually, that was probably just an expensive sop to the base.

Just as one example of how the words don't match the actions:   Trump said one of the things he's committed to is bringing down the costs of prescription drugs.   But he did not also say that he recently appointed a new head of Health and Human Services (to replace Tom Price);  and this person is none other than the former CEO of Eli Lily Pharmaceutical Co., which has been criticized for pricing in his own company.  HHS is the agency most concerned with drug costs because of Medicare and Medicaid. 

And then there were outright lies of fact;  claiming credit for things he had nothing to do with;  ignoring the inconvenient bad news, much of which he created himself.

It lasted an agonizing hour and a half.    But I couldn't not watch.

Ralph