Last night the president made a televised address and if I recall correctly this is the first time he's done it (I'm not including his State of The Nation speeches to congress). Given the government partial shutdown over the impasse on the border wall, the administration must have felt there was some urgency to address the issue and share the president's side of the story. Otherwise the president could have remained with Twitter as the primary source of his arguments.
I've maintained that the president should be doing this type of address more often. Yes, it's scripted which is not his forte. It's also true that it gives the Democrats a last word rebuttal and the networks a chance to claim he's lying again (and yes that happened). But it is an opportunity for the president to talk, unfiltered and uninterrupted by the media (I'm looking at you Fake Jim Acosta), and at 9 or so minutes, highly focused and specific. It's a golden opportunity that's been underutilized by the president so far.
Maybe the president was holding this in reserve and had always planned on shifting the battlefront in order to keep Democrats and the media off balance. That would be a smart reason for holding off. You can see that when you see the response by Pelosi and Schumer who looked like a pair of aliens just discovering life on earth in their response. Or perhaps, the president felt that by holding addresses in abeyance that when he does it, it carries added weight resulting from the rarity of it's use. Both are good reasons, and even if it was just a preference for Twitter, the timeliness of the change serves both those points and does so in regards to probably his signature campaign issue.
Here's the president's address:
And how did the Democrats respond? With lies and a cringe-worthy lack of charisma and empathetic engagement.
I know a lot of people looking at that were thinking of the painting American Gothic, but in a comic vein, I see it more as this:
