It’s not a shift in tone, it’s just another tactic.

Since President Trump’s address to Congress on Tuesday night, the mainstream media has excitedly touted Trump’s change in style, moving from blustery rhetoric to you know, actually, fairly normal, if not eloquent.

Sure, he didn’t go off on an unhinged rampage as he frequently did on the campaign trail. And sure, he didn’t horrify us all with talk of “American carnage” (thankfully). But that doesn’t change the content of his speech.

Here are four reasons why this speech changes nothing.

1) He was reading off a teleprompter.

He was doing what any 5th grader can do. This doesn’t make him suited to the highest office of the land. It just makes him someone can play to his audience.

He is the President of the United States, for crying out loud. Reading a script doesn’t show that he has the judgment or intellect that a president should have.

2) His words and actions since January 20th.

This speech doesn’t take away any of the unpresidential, mildly unconstitutional things he’s done since his inauguration. Let’s just recap some of them:

• passed an executive order banning people from 7 Muslim-majority countries, including Syrian refugees, some of the most vulnerable people on the planet, claimed it wasn’t a Muslim ban, and when it was blocked by the federal court, proceeded to tweet “SEE YOU IN COURT, THE SECURITY OF OUR NATION IS AT STAKE!”
• attacked the press in an eerily Nixon manner: derided the media the “enemy of the American people”; banned news organizations including CNN, the Times, BuzzFeed and Politico from a news conference; called for the end of the use of “made up” anonymous sources
• started the process of repealing Obama-era environmental regulations designed to combat climate change
• insulted the Australian prime minister
• looked over classified documents at Mar-A-Lago with Shinzo Abe, by the light of a cell phone flashlight
• assumed all black people know each other
• declared himself the least racist, least anti-Semitic person when given an opportunity to denounce hate crimes by a Jewish reporter, then cited electoral college statistics

And let’s not forget the whole Trump-Putin connection, or everything he’s said and done before January 20th, because that would make this article impossibly long. (That being said, even this isn’t close to being a complete list, you can find a better one here)

3) It’s still the same content, in different words.

Naked Nationalism

America must put its own citizens first, because only then can we truly make America great again.

Like all things, nationalism is good when balanced. But it gets dangerous in excess, and Does Bad Things. Like WWI.

Bad solutions to fake problems

Our military will be given the resources its brave warriors so richly deserve.

The US spends more on its military than China, Saudi Arabia, Russia, UK, India, France, and Japan, combined (look here for the data). Yet, Trump continues to claim that our military is underfunded.

That immigration thing again

By finally enforcing our immigration laws, we will raise wages, help the unemployed, save billions and billions of dollars, and make our communities safer for everyone.

This deserves a whole article, so I’m going to refrain from commenting yet.

Staggeringly inadequate solutions to real problems

…we are imposing a new rule which mandates that for every one new regulation, two old regulations must be eliminated. We are going to stop the regulations that threaten the future and livelihood of our great coal miners.

Two things: (a) The coal miners are losing jobs because the work force has shifted, and (b) climate change.

Anyway, due to the regulations he’s already eliminated,

• Social Security can’t be used to prevent individuals with disabling mental health issues from buying guns
• Telecommunication giants don’t need to take “reasonable measures” to “ensure that their customers’ Social Security numbers, web browsing history and other personal information are not stolen or accidentally released”
• Hunters can use lead-based bullets (“which can accidentally poison wildlife, on 150 million acres of federal lands”)
• Coal companies can dump waste into rivers

Source: this nice article from the NYT (there’s about 90 in total).

As promised, I directed the Department of Defense to develop a plan to demolish and destroy ISIS, a network of lawless savages that have slaughtered Muslims and Christians, and men and women and children of all faiths and all beliefs.

Oh, because it never would have occurred to Bush or Obama to do that.

No solution at all for real problems

To protect our citizens, I have directed the Department of Justice to form a task force on reducing violent crime.

How specific!

And, of course, that he can bring back jobs lost to automation.

I am going to bring back millions of jobs.

4) He’s done this before.

It’s almost disgusting to watch the media, shunned on multiple occasions by Trump, suddenly declare him presidential. Don’t fall for the same trap.