Rambling Trump calls an emergency in speech that goes on and on and on

There was no martial music, no armed guards snapping to attention, no ominous threats of arrest or worse from an iron-willed authoritarian. When Donald Trump awarded himself emergency powers on Friday, it was with an all too familiar mix of falsehoods, fearmongering and shoutouts to his favourite rightwing broadcasters.

It may have left some observers wondering which is worse.

“Rush Limbaugh?” mused Trump, standing in the White House Rose Garden before the world’s press and thinking about the rightwing radio host who spread conspiracy theories about Barack Obama’s birthplace.

“I think he’s a great guy. He’s a guy who can speak for three hours without a phone call. Try doing that some time. For three hours he speaks!”

On Friday the US president tried speaking for just under one hour without a phone call or teleprompter. It did not go well.

Ostensibly, he was here to declare a national emergency and stop what he portrays as zombie-like criminals storming across the US-Mexico border.

In reality, it was Trump at his Trumpiest, reprising his now familiar role of the old man at the bar sounding off about the world’s ills. He took wild detours into the virtues of the death penalty, his trade war with China, “fake news” on CNN, stock market records, a nod to “the complexity and the problems” of Brexit, why Ann Coulter is “off the reservation”, a plea to new attorney general Bill Barr to “enjoy your life!”, a bark at a reporter to “sit down!”, the lives he has saved in Syria and why he deserves a Nobel peace prize more than Obama, who was “so close to starting a big war with North Korea”.

There were random segues from illegal immigration to relations with President Xi. Trump sniffed frequently, and at times his speech sounded slurred, as he bragged of his achievements, aired his grievances and offered an alarming preview of his 2020 campaign pitch.

But back to the national emergency. Trump proclaimed: “We’re going to confront the national security crisis on our southern border and we’re going to do it one way or the other because we have to do it. It’s an invasion.”

He insisted it was no big deal because previous presidents have also declared emergencies, but did not explain why the country first had to suffer a record 35-day government shutdown before he reached that conclusion.

“Everyone knows that walls work,” he claimed before handing out a serving of word salad that was difficult to understand even by Trump’s standards. “A big majority of the big drugs, the big drug loads don’t go through ports of entry. They can’t go through ports of entry. You can’t take big loads because you have people. We have some very capable people, the border patrol, law enforcement, looking.

“You can’t take human traffic – women and girls, you can’t take them through ports of entry, you can’t have them tied up in the back seat of a car or a truck or a van. They open the door. They look. They can’t see three women with tape on their mouth or three women whose hands are tied? They go through areas where you have no wall.

“Everybody knows that. Nancy [Pelosi] knows it. Chuck [Schumer] knows it. They all know it. It’s all a big lie. It’s a big con game.”

There is indeed a con. Government figures show that the great majority of drugs do indeed flow through ports of entry. Trump’s peculiar obsession with women whose mouths and hands are taped, a trope he keeps repeating, is baffling. A recent Washington Post report said authorities have found no such cases.

And just as at past events, there was a rather grim and gratuitous use of “angel moms” – women whose children have been killed by illegal immigrants – as political props.

Trump asked one woman to stand up and brandish a photo of her dead daughter to the assembled media; he asked another to show a picture of her late husband. During a question and answer with reporters, Trump turned to the women for affirmation.

Why did the wall not get built earlier? For once, Trump was too polite to blame former House speaker Paul Ryan by name, though everyone knew that’s whom he meant. And the president offered a rare sliver of modesty. “I am learning. I never did politics before. Now I do politics.”

Yes, we noticed. And, just like that, America had a new national emergency officially declared.