Good Strides

(Via)

It's painful watching a human being fail a Turing Test. https://t.co/KsbtNKulxA

— Neil Gaiman (@neilhimself) July 19, 2019

One of the most interesting things about this ghastly fiasco in which Trump demonstrates, as Gaiman suggests, that he would have a hard time convincing an impartial jury that he's a human, is that it wasn't supposed to happen—the president wasn't scheduled to play any role in the events as announced by the State Department:

On July 16 at 9:00 AM EDT, Secretary Pompeo will kick-off the first day of the Ministerial to Advance Religious Freedom with brief remarks. Following the Secretary’s opening address, Ambassador at Large for International Religious Freedom Sam Brownback will deliver remarks on the need for increased partnerships in the fight to advance religious freedom. At 3:25 PM EDT, U.S. Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi and retired U.S. Representative Frank Wolf will participate in a discussion moderated by Ambassador Brownback on religious freedom challenges in China and the importance of bipartisan, whole-of-government approaches to defending religious freedom.

On July 17, Secretary Pompeo will present the Department of State’s first-ever International Religious Freedom Awards to individuals who have demonstrated an ongoing and relentless commitment to promoting religious freedom.

On July 18 at 8:55 AM EDT, Secretary Pompeo will deliver keynote remarks on the state of religious freedom around the world, advancements over the last year, and remaining work to be done. Vice President Mike Pence will deliver remarks at 11:00 AM EDT, underscoring international religious freedom as a key U.S. foreign policy priority. At 1:00 PM EDT, White House Acting Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney will deliver opening remarks at the Luncheon for the Heads of Foreign Delegation.

So Trump or Mulvaney or Miller decided at the last minute to invite the award winners over to the Oval Office, presumably in the wake of his quarrel with the women of the congressional Squad and condemnation on Tuesday by the House of Representatives for the racism he showed,, so he could display himself being compassionate with women of color, as long as they're the right sort, thus proving that he wasn't a racist at all, before flying off to Greenville to address the Send Her Back rally.

Which backfired, as you'd expect, because he wasn't willing to do any sort of homework for it, and couldn't help revealing throughout that he had no idea what these people were about except that the things they had been though were "tough"—the transcript shows him using the word seven times, lastly by way of congratulating himself

So, you see, the world is a tough place.  And we’re making strides.  We’ve made some very good strides. 

More quotes (couldn't stop myself) at The Rectification of Names.