Ignore the colorful and fresh-faced Democrats filling up your social media feed. The new face of their party is the same as the old one. It is a white, wrinkled face that no amount of plastic surgery can reconfigure. It is Chuck & Nancy; Schumer and Pelosi, the dinosaurs who don’t die. They aren’t likable, to use a word Democrats really don’t like.

Trump’s first Oval Office speech was flat, in the end — he didn’t drop a news bomb. He didn’t call a national emergency. He reiterated his position with lots of facts and figures about illegal immigrant crime. He sniffed a bit (this seems to be a regular feature of his big TV moments). He tried to sound sombre but that’s not his forte. There was a sentimental line about how rich people ‘don’t build walls because they hate the people on the outside, but because they love the people on the inside’ (copied, apparently, from Fox News host) and something about ‘gripping souls.’ But that was about as close as he got to a rhetorical flight.

And then Chuck & Nancy came on and made Trump look like a decent statesman and a great TV speaker. First off, what PR men call ‘the optics’ of their joint statement were terrible. The pair looked like parents scolding naughty Donald — or naughty you, viewer, for having listened to him. Pelosi’s eyes boggled slightly more than usual. Schumer, disappointed dad, nodded along and then chimed in. They looked creepy: a ‘liberal Gothic’ meme sprouted on Twitter very quickly.





Plus, their rebuttals to Trump’s logic sounded pat and drab. The President had just appealed for unity and Chuck & Nancy called him divisive. Both leaderships are divisive, obviously, otherwise we wouldn’t have a government shutdown. They accused the president of ‘misinformation’ but were unable to specify what he said that was wrong. They didn’t take on the speech. They just rehashed the Democratic talking points of the day.

Trump’s speaking style is pedestrian. But Pelosi’s is patronizing and Schumer’s is soporific. The President is better than Nancy at reading from a teleprompter, which is saying something. Together, their joint response to Trump’s speech was stilted and strange. And everybody knows they have both supported equally tough border security before, when it wasn’t put forward by Donald Trump. Say what you want about Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, at least she hasn’t been in politics long enough to be such a glaring hypocrite.

I once heard a senior Republican figure say that ‘every time Nancy Pelosi opens her mouth, I feel like cutting her a check.’ Now, Chuck & Nancy together are the greatest gift Team Trump could ever hope for.