Is President Trump really President Sybil?

If there was any remaining doubt that President Trump had completed his long-anticipated "pivot" from a rogue political provocateur into a stable leader who displays presidential temperament, it was dashed this Saturday morning. There has been no "pivot". Instead, we continue to witness a man who appears to have multiple and sometimes conflicting personalities.

Much has been said about Trump's performance addressing Congress on Tuesday evening. Policy issues aside, his speaking style was hailed as calm, measured and even re-assuring.  There had been such a low bar of expectation going in that any effort that wasn't perceived as taking a dump on the podium was encouraging. The speech was a success for that, although SmartyPants Keith Olberman tweeted

I'd like to point out that many of the pundits praising Trump for a bad read of a bland speech also praised "Mission Accomplished" 

And there were these choice comments found on Wonkette:

"So we all witness almost five weeks of incompetence, repression, fascism, treason, incoherence, ignorance and stupidity from Trump and his entire administration, yet somehow all of that is forgotten because he managed to read a speech off a teleprompter (thought those were bad, btw) without sounding like a complete raving idiot? And now he is getting sloppy tongue baths from much of the media?"

 "If Trump is learning on the job, that would be real news. Yes, he sounded like a president. But the hours leading up to the speech suggested that unless he’s reading from a Teleprompter, he still doesn’t get what it means to be one.

Just to recap quickly, Trump blamed Barack Obama for protests against his administration and leaks coming from inside it. He hinted that maybe Jews were responsible for a wave of anti-Semitic attacks to make him look bad. And most egregiously, this commander in chief seemed to blame the military for losing  Ryan Owens, a Navy SEAL, in a Yemen raid that went bad."

"I'm just about ready to give up on 99% of the American media once and for all. It seems they'll never stop being amazed and delighted whenever it turns out that a Republican president can read. It basically gives Trump a form of immunity: Whenever he feels the heat from the media is getting uncomfortable, he can just give a scripted speech, and suddenly even "liberal" reporters will be tripping over each other in their eagerness to tell us that he has been washed in the blood of the lamb and is a new and changed man. And I'm sure these same reporters will never stop complaining that Democrats are "over-prepared" and use too many long and difficult words."

Well, yes. But any residual post-Congressional speech Presidential Timber talk was chopped down yesterday and this morning when Trump found his phone and became President Tweet again. In a bizarre series of early morning posts, Trump suggested that President Obama had wiretapped his Trump Tower residence during the runup to the election.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-politics/wp/2017/03/04/trump-accuses-obama-of-nixonwatergate-plot-to-wire-tap-trump-tower/?utm_term=.ace0638c5da1#comments

Oy vey. I do not think he knows what "McCarthyism" really means. Next he'll be going full-on Captain Queeg, proclaiming that someone has been stealing the strawberries.

"Ah, but the strawberries... that's where I had them! They laughed at me and made their jokes, but I proved beyond the shadow of a doubt... and with geometric logic..."

So here is what is happening. We have multiple Donald Trumps. There is Low-Key Trump who reads other people's words from a Teleprompter at Inaugurations, Joint Congressional addresses, and such. The Teleprompter acts like a restraining shock collar for him, or like a strong med such as Lithium. His style is subdued and kinda boring.

There is Hair-on-Fire Donald Trump who speaks his polluted stream-of-consciousness rambles at news conferences and campaign rallies. He's high-energy and fierce. He galvanizes and offends. It's Reality TV style, our Jerry Springer Nation President.

Then there is Off-Camera Twitter Trump. Although he has his official @DonaldTrump account, there are two mindsets at play. During work hours, his tweets are delivered on an iPhone. They are like the Teleprompter Trump - dull, official stuff. The reason is because it's not Trump at all - these Tweets are from staffers, using the iPhone. Here's the story:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2016/08/12/two-people-write-trumps-tweets-he-writes-the-angrier-ones/?utm_term=.45570e84a003

Tweets emanating from his Android device are from him. And they are his usual outrageous material, dipping into his 400 word vocabulary to express the latest trivial umbrage detected by his radar. They are usually delivered off-hours.

There are his other personas, too, although they are not documented on camera or social media. His charming and flattering style when he's trying to get something from someone he respects or fears (like Carl Icahn, or Vladimir Putin). His role as Head of Family to his children and wife. If he weren't the Leader of the Free World, his multiple personalities would be benignly fascinating.

But they aren't and he is. To help us laugh through the pain, here are a couple of fun Twitter accounts that deal with Trump's tweeting habits. The first displays his actual tweets and suggest what a "mature" Trump would have really tweeted:

https://twitter.com/maturetrumptwts?lang=en

And there is a full-blown Trump Twitter snarky satire account:

https://twitter.com/realdonaldrumpf?lang=en

Finally, here are our old friends at Bad Lip Reading who have deciphered what Trump was saying in his limousine as it pulled up to the Capitol building for his Congressional address:

https://twitter.com/BadLipReading?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Eauthor

If you liked that, and who wouldn't, here is their take on the Trump Inauguration. It's fantastic:

Have a good weekend!