Sarah Huckabee Sanders turned Thursday's White House press briefing over to "special guest" President Trump for a few minutes, but there was a catch: He appeared on two TV screens, in a pretaped pep talk for the Republican tax overhaul, thus avoiding any questions. Trump "did avoid some zingers" about his mental acuity, Jeanne Moos noted at CNN, but reporters were unimpressed with the lecture from Trump's disembodied head. Some wags on Twitter compared the spectacle to The Wizard of Oz, "but there was no curtain-grabbing Toto to disturb the stagecraft at the briefing," Moos said, immediately mixing her metaphor. "Instead of making the trek from the Oval Office the president made like Star Trek."
Moos' "hail to the star chief" kicker is pretty lame, but frankly, so was the stunt that inspired it.
Subscribe to The Week
Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.
Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
-
Trump officials reinstating 2 Confederate monumentsSpeed Read The administration has plans to 'restore Confederate names and symbols' discarded in the wake of George Floyd's 2020 murder
-
Trump nominates Powell critic for vacant Fed seatspeed read Stephen Miran, the chair of Trump's Council of Economic Advisers and a fellow critic of Fed chair Jerome Powell, has been nominated to fill a seat on the Federal Reserve Board of Governors
-
ICE scraps age limits amid hiring pushSpeed Read Anyone 18 or older can now apply to be an ICE agent
-
Trump's global tariffs take effect, with new additionsSpeed Read Tariffs on more than 90 US trading partners went into effect, escalating the global trade war
-
House committee subpoenas Epstein filesSpeed Read The House Oversight Committee has issued a subpoena to the Justice Department for its Jeffrey Epstein files with an Aug. 19 deadline
-
India rejects Trump threat over Russian oilSpeed Read The president said he would raise tariffs on India for buying and selling Russian oil
-
NY's Hochul vows response to Texas gerrymanderSpeed Read Gov. Kathy Hochul has promised to play ball with redistricting that favors the Democrats
-
Texas Democrats exit state to block redistricting voteSpeed Read More than 51 legislators fled the state in protest of the GOP's plan to redraw congressional districts
