President Donald Trump’s farewell address – delivered via a video recorded last Monday and released Tuesday, his final full day in office – is a strange document that risks being overlooked as his tumultuous term ended.
As someone who has always taken Trump both literally and seriously, I tried to read those 2,800 words with an open mind. Following the calamities of 2020 and the shutdown of Trump’s Twitter account, this speech was Trump’s final, unfiltered message to the American people before flying home to Florida.
Whoever was tasked with writing this speech – Stephen Miller, perhaps – had no easy job. The farewell address is almost a paradox, the departing leader’s first attempt at shaping history’s verdict on his term. George Washington used his to warn against political parties and factions and to caution America to avoid foreign alliances and entanglements. Dwight D. Eisenhower cautioned against the creation of a permanent military-industrial complex that would drive foreign policy. Less prophetically, and closer to our own times, George W. Bush defended his administration’s response to the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, and Barack Obama told his supporters: “I’m asking you to believe. Not in my ability to bring about change – but in yours.”
Trump’s farewell address is remarkable in several respects.
It is one of the only times in months that he has delivered remarks without making reference to his Big Lie – rejected by dozens of courts, including the Supreme Court – about a stolen election. While he didn’t mention his successor, Joe Biden, by name, he acknowledged that a new administration was taking power and asked us to “pray for its success in keeping America safe and prosperous” – the closest we’ll ever get to a concession speech from the world’s sorest loser. And Trump again put on the record, however belatedly and grudgingly, a condemnation of the deadly Jan. 6 riot at the Capitol – a massive security failure directly inspired by Trump’s calls to his enraged (and, in many cases, crazed) followers. “Political violence is an attack on everything we cherish as Americans,” he declared. “It can never be tolerated.”