When Trump went off script during his Naval Academy commencement address, he repeated himself, rambled, bragged about himself, and, unconsciously, told us a lot about his fears and insecurities :
-Thank you. Thank you. Hello, midshipmen, hello ( Let me say to the entire brigade—please be at ease—enjoy yourselves, because we are all here to celebrate the amazing class of 2018.) Amazing job. Thank you. Really something.
-for the record, this year, Navy beat Army 19 times. And I will not mention, I promised, who won the football game. I will not mention it. I refuse to say it. But that is a great achievement.
-And let me take a guess, you are still not tired of winning. Winning is such a great feeling, isn’t it? Winning is such a great feeling.
- Hello, folks, back there.
-(Victory.) A very important word.
- And we are respected again, I can tell you that. We are respected again. A lot of things have happened. We are respected again.
-(Bruce Voorhees.) Well-known all over.
-(he spent most of his time teaching the city slickers from the east the correct pronunciation of Nevada.) And I had to learn that, too, to win the state. Great place.
-(he was just like you in many ways.) Just like you. Not a lot of difference.
-(and 35) very tough, very well conditioned (Navy SEALs.)
-And in case you have not noticed, we have become a lot stronger lately. A lot.
- No money for the military? Those days are over.
-you have read all about it,
-a $700 billion, largest-ever amount of money to support our great war fighters. And I might add that next year—the $700 billion, not million. They’re liking the sound of million, but billion is better-the $700 billion goes to $716 billion,
-and we are going to be stronger than ever before. We will have the strongest military that we have ever had, and it won’t even be close. And when did we need it more than now?
-That means new ships. You like that. We have now the lowest number of ships we have had since World War I. And very soon, we are going to get to 355 beautiful ships. That is almost a couple of hundred more ships. So you will be around for a long time. We are not running out of equipment. We’re not running out of ships. And that has been approved. And we are honored by it.
--(You are going to have new equipment, and well-deserved pay raises. We just got to a big pay raise for the first time in 10 years). We got to a big pay increase, first time in over 10 years. I fought for you. That was the hardest one to get. But you never had a chance of losing.
-We are going to take care of our veterans. We are doing a great job with it. We are taking care, finally, after decades, we are taking care of our veterans.
- (We passed VA accountability.) Everybody said it could not be done. If you didn’t do a good job, ou could not get fired. Now, you don’t do a good job and take care of our veterans, they will look you in the eye and they say, “Jim, you’re fired! You’re out! Out!” Get him out of here. They all said you could not get it. They tried to get it for 35 years. We will say, “Get him out of here, he doesn’t take care of our vets.”
-And hopefully, we never have to use all of this beautiful, new, powerful equipment. But you know, you are less likely to have to use it if you have it and know how to work it. And nobody knows how to work it like you.
-(Victory, winning,) beautiful words, but that is what it is all about.
-(We are rebuilding our defense industrial base to forge American iron, aluminum, and steel,) which, by the way, we just put tariffs on when it comes in from other countries. Okay? We are taking in a lot of money now, our country. They pay that big, beautiful tariff and it goes right into building new ships.
-(Don’t give up the ship.) Famous phrase. We even use it in business. Things are going bad, you say, “Don’t give up the ship.” Keep fighting. Don’t give up the ship. But it’s really—you guys started it.
- (“Damn the torpedoes. Full speed ahead.”) Damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead.
- What should I do? What should I do? I’ll stay. I’ll stay. I will stay.
