Trump falters his way down a ramp, and what do you know: There's always a tweet

Image is pretty much everything for Donald Trump, so he cannot be happy that the big image that came out of his big commencement speech at West Point was of him inching his way unsteadily down a gentle ramp. West Point was supposed to wrap Trump in presidential pomp and military glory and Trump wanted it badly enough to force the military academy to hold a commencement ceremony that might otherwise not have been held due to coronavirus, and for which cadets were called back to campus after having been sent home.

But images of helicopter flyovers and saluting cadets took a distant second place to that ramp walk, in which Trump pursed his lips as he took small, tentative steps, noticeably leading with his left leg, his eyes glued to the ramp directly in front of him. That has Trump predictably on the defensive, and lying about what we can all see in the video.

“The ramp that I descended after my West Point Commencement speech was very long & steep, had no handrail and, most importantly, was very slippery,” Trump tweeted. “The last thing I was going to do is ‘fall’ for the Fake News to have fun with. Final ten feet I ran down to level ground. Momentum!”

We can all see in the video that the ramp was neither long nor steep, that it was a sunny day with no reason for things to be slippery, and that Trump walked a little faster—but did not run—the last two or three steps—but not 10 feet. It is, however, true that there was no handrail. 

Trump also drew attention during his West Point speech for trying to take a drink from a glass of water with the glass in his right hand, then using his left hand to steady and raise it.

From a politician who would admit that, hey, this was the day before his 74th birthday and his eyesight isn’t the best/he’s got a leg problem (or, for the water glass incident, a shoulder problem)/he has literally any minor human frailty common to septuagenarians, this might not be a big deal. But this is Donald Trump, a man who likes to attack his political opponents as physically weak or unwell, and who made an unexpected trip to Walter Reed National Medical Center last November, with the White House offering clearly false explanations for why he went, and then this year released less information about his annual physical than in previous years. 

Oh, and there’s always a tweet. In 2014, Trump attacked how President Barack Obama descended the stairs of Air Force One. How so? Obama apparently went down too fast: “The way President Obama runs down the stairs of Air Force 1, hopping & bobbing all the way, is so inelegant and unpresidential. Do not fall!”

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