Random thoughts to begin our assessment of He, Trump's Big, Huge Foreign Policy Speech on Wednesday.

"You cannot have a foreign policy without diplomacy."

"Victory-with-a-capital V."

Classy!

Gravitas!

It turns out that all those people who have made their careers mocking the president for using a teleprompter were more wrong than we knew. Reading from a teleprompter is hard. He, Trump can't do it very well. He can't resist the temptation to jam "very, very" in there as modifiers. He can't help but make his every loose and random thought—and, in this speech, his thoughts were as loose and random as dust in a sunbeam—the greatest, most important, most winning synapse that ever fired within any human brain. His tongue seemed to cramp while pronouncing "San Bernadino." I began to wonder if the TelePrompters were props, like cement owls in the garden.

As a speech, it was simply a gussied-up version of everything that He, Trump has been telling audiences since his helicopter first landed at last summer's Iowa State Fair. America First. Build up the military. Knuckle the world into doing business with us. Winning! In addition, he was pretty free with borrowing the empty sloganeering of some of his defeated rivals.

"The world is most peaceful and most prosperous when America is strongest."

Jeb (!) Bush used to say this all the time.

"And we must—we have to and we will make America great again. And if we do that—and if we do that, perhaps this century can be the most peaceful and prosperous the world has ever, ever known."

This was just inches from Young Marco Rubio's customary punchline about how this century can be The New American Century.

The speech was a perfect fractal of his campaign. It was one tautology after another because his campaign is one great tautology itself. He, Trump can do X, Y, and Z because he is He, Trump, who can do X, Y, and Z. The basic argument for his candidacy remains that he is Trump, and you're not, and neither are any of those other losers.

"I will view as president the world through the clear lens of American interests. I will be America's greatest defender and most loyal champion. We will not apologize for becoming successful again, but will instead embrace the unique heritage that makes us who we are. The world is most peaceful and most prosperous when America is strongest. America will continue and continue forever to play the role of peacemaker. We will always help save lives and indeed humanity itself, but to play the role, we must make America strong again."

How does this make him different from every person who has run for president in the past two centuries? Because He's Trump, and they were not.

But the heart of this speech began beating one night in April of 2011, when the president largely undressed He, Trump in front of god and all at the White House Correspondents Dinner. He, Trump was then deeply into his Birther persona and the president tore him down, brick by brick, while all official Washington laughed out loud. The edge of the president's remarks became even sharper when it was revealed that, while the dinner was going on, American special-ops forces were embarked on the mission that ended up with the killing of Osama bin Laden.

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You will never convince me that He, Trump ever got over that spanking and, while I wouldn't go so far as to argue that his humiliation that night is the raison d'etre for his campaign, it plainly is a festering wound in the man's psyche and, in his speech, he got a chance to lance it in public.

"First, our resources are totally over extended. President Obama has weakened our military by weakening our economy. He's crippled us with wasteful spending, massive debt, low growth, a huge trade deficit and open borders. Our manufacturing trade deficit with the world is now approaching $1 trillion a year. We're rebuilding other countries while weakening our own. Ending the theft of American jobs will give us resources we need to rebuild our military, which has to happen and regain our financial independence and strength. I am the only person running for the presidency who understands this and this is a serious problem. I'm the only one—believe me, I know them all, I'm the only one who knows how to fix it."

He came right up to the brink of accusing the president of deliberately weakening the country—there were a lot of echoes of Richard Nixon's pitiful helpless giant in the speech—and he came right up to the brink of charging the president of dereliction of duty. This was his chance to kick back at the guy who shamed him in front of all the pretty people of the Beltway, and he wasn't going to miss it.

For all the incoherence, and all the tautology, and all the naked vengeance that ran through the speech, there were some notable elements to it that, in the hands of a different candidate, might actually constitute a break with the conservative foreign-policy doctrines of the recent past. He went long against what he calls "nation-building," and he continues to thump his tub on the interesting notion by which Trump intimates that that our allies have been freeloading on this country for their national defense. He tied that to his general theme of our encroaching national enfeeblement:

They look at the United States as weak and forgiving and feel no obligation to honor their agreements with us. In NATO, for instance, only 4 of 28 other member countries besides America, are spending the minimum required 2 percent of GDP on defense. We have spent trillions of dollars over time on planes, missiles, ships, equipment, building up our military to provide a strong defense for Europe and Asia. The countries we are defending must pay for the cost of this defense, and if not, the U.S. must be prepared to let these countries defend themselves. We have no choice.

This is a point worthy of serious debate. This country is overextended and there are a number of our putative allies—most notably in the Middle East—who could be paying their own freight. But it got lost in his headlong rush to get his own back against the president. (Does he really think that the country was "humiliated" when it failed to win the opportunity to get shaken down by the crooks at the International Olympic Committee? Does anyone even remember that episode anyway?) He can't stop himself. The only way a TelePrompter is going to help with this problem is if somebody knocks him senseless with it.

This was not a speech aimed at changing minds, and in that, it succeeded admirably. It was all the self-contradiction and vague muscle-flexing that has propelled He, Trump to within a whisker of the Republican presidential nomination. The only difference was that he boasted about himself a little more deliberately. One might even say more thoughtfully.

Naw, one might not say that at all.

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Charles P. Pierce Charles P Pierce is the author of four books, most recently Idiot America, and has been a working journalist since 1976.

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