In a new Substack article, former Republican strategist Rick Wilson expressed his sympathy for Donald Trump's speechwriters whose attempts at "penning history" end up scrambled into "word vomit" by a president whose sole concern is to air his own grievances.
Wilson dissected Trump's Memorial Day speech at Arlington National Cemetery that the author called "repulsive" and blatantly lacking the "solemnity" that the country deserved in honor of its fallen heroes.
"If you read the transcript, you can see where some well-meaning, underpaid White House ghoul tried for a moment of grace and uplift, to no avail. They tried to do their job and give America the solemnity it deserves on that day. There were lines intended to honor the lives of soldiers, sailors, airmen, and Marines who made the ultimate sacrifice."
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But, Wilson wrote, "Trump couldn’t stay in the moment."
"A normal president uses Memorial Day to channel the nation’s grief, to recognize the staggering cost of war, and to offer comfort to those left behind," Wilson continued. "Trump uses it as a stage for his ongoing one-man play: The Agonies of Donald, the Most Wronged Man in America. It’s less a speech and more an audition for the role of martyr-in-chief."
Wilson then envisioned an idealistic staffer who tried their best to capture the essence of Memorial Day, only to be thwarted by the whims of the commander-in-chief.
"You could almost feel sorry for the poor staffer who wrote the speech, someone who probably came to Washington dreaming of penning history, only to find their words wrapped around the vacuous soul of a man who’d rather talk about crowd size or how much Putin respects him," Wilson wrote. "You could see where they reached for poetry, for meaning, for lines that might last. But the monster always escapes the cage. Always. Because in Trump’s world, everything is always about Trump."