We all read the story and watched the video. Our valiant [insert derogatory name here] shuffled slowly and carefully down what looked like a rather pedestrian ramp after his rather low-intensity speech at the West Point graduation.
Yes, that is the ‘graduation’ that he forced all the cadets to come back to West Point together for, just to hear him meander on about….. stuff. We know this because the truth is that all of the cadets had already graduated and been commissioned as second lieutenants weeks before — so no graduation ceremony was required.
Since the ‘ramp shuffle heard ‘round the world’ — which would have been a 1-day news cycle blip, then totally forgotten in the ever-increasing pile of poo that is Disinfectant Donnie’s ‘presidency — he has repeatedly tried to explain away what we all clearly saw, doing nothing but keeping our attention on it for 2 weeks now.
He started with ‘too steep’, ‘no railing’, ‘very very slippery’ (the slipperiest ever, I suppose).
Last night at his sparsely attended Tulsa rally, he spent a lot of time on the ramp (and the water sip). We heard that he was wearing very very slippery leather shoes, and again that the ramp was very very slippery. He also riffed for several minutes on the long, detailed conversation he had with General Williams, the West Point superintendent, about the hazards he would be facing because of his very very slippery leather shoes. Oh, by the way, I reviewed the full video of the incident, and that conversation never took place. tRump and Lt. Gen. Williams exchanged a few words in the middle of the trip down the ramp, but had no conversation as they approached it. Surprise!
I went back and watched the full video of the graduation ceremony to verify my memory that there wasn’t any conversation, and as I fast-forwarded through it, I realized that some of the zoom/pan views that moved around actually gave a view of the ramp in question.
I had been wondering how in the world the people who planned, designed and executed the graduation ceremony could possibly have built the reviewing platform with a dangerous ramp…. it just doesn’t make any sense.
In particular, that wasn’t some unique, one-off design — when Orange Julius decided to impose himself on West Point, somebody called up ‘Reviewing Platforms R Us’ and said ‘We need a platform for X people on Y date’. The contractor consulted his design binder, wrote a work order and had his people load up the pieces of the agreed-upon platform — along with 1,200 or so folding chairs — and carted them up to West Point.
And we’re supposed to believe that part of that off-the-shelf reviewing platform was a SLIPPERY RAMP? From a contractor who would have liability issues from a slip-and-fall incident?
Here’s some screen-shots — not great resolution, but the best I could get. I’m putting up 5 with different resolutions as I don’t know which will show up better on anyone’s screen.
That looks like a pretty standard ramp with strips of non-skid on it…. exactly what I would expect from a commercial vendor.
Now, the other possibility is that West Point does enough events on the marching plain that they have their own reviewing stand….. hmmmm, let me look at some other West Point events….. they usually hold their graduation ceremony in Michie Stadium, so let’s go look at last year:
Same reviewing stand, same ramp (watch the whole video for more views of the ramp and stand).
Then I looked at 2018, and came upon a very interesting moment in the video:
Wow! The ramp in high definition! If you blow it up, you can see that it is plywood over metal box beams, painted West Point grey (to match the uniforms, I suppose), with glue-on strips of non-skid every 2 feet.
And the young soon-to-be second lieutenant in the spike high heels is having NO PROBLEM navigating it.
So the ramp most likely belongs to West Point, and it is used for graduation every year. And before this year, every graduating cadet marched up one side, saluted and shook hands with the distinguished guest, got their diploma, and marched down the other side…. with no problems at all.
And there you have it — another total fabrication by our Dear Leader.
I’m sure nobody is surprised. I just thought it worth documenting.
Cheers.