Here is a phrase that is no fun to type: "the barely coded warning of diplomatic disaster to come begins around the two-hour-and-forty-five-minute mark above, during President Donald Trump's commencement address at Liberty University." It is no fun to type because it involves the promise of a diplomatic disaster, which at best is the sort of thing that leads unpleasant men with names like @IntelJeff to go on righteous tweetstorms and at worst involves actual war. It is also no fun because it implies the existence of two hours and forty five minutes of commencement prior to that point, and also the existence of some chunk of speech after that. It's just no good, and that's not even taking into account the fact that the aforementioned Barely Coded Warning Of Diplomatic Disaster To Come involved President Trump reading through Liberty's 2018 FBS football schedule.It is just a strange fact of life that, in 2017, the President of the United States is used to get some more attention for a fledgling college football program's road game against New Mexico State. Liberty, the evangelical university founded by the late reverend Jerry Falwell, has long planned on using athletics to raise its profile and bring its religious message to the broader public. The school has long had competitive basketball and football programs in the Big South Conference, but more recently committed to making the jump from the FCS to the FBS, in which it will play its first season as an independent in 2018. There are some questions about whether or not this is a good idea for a small university—or any university, given that FBS independents either exist mostly to get kicked around by bigger programs in paycheck games or are BYU—but Liberty has both the money and the flexible principles necessary to give it a shot. The revelation that Liberty will pay Old Dominion University $1.2 million to almost certainly thump the Flames in their FBS opener is proof of the former; hiring Ian McCaw, who left his job as Baylor's Athletic Director in disgrace after covering up his football program's serial sexual assault issues, is proof of the latter.That Trump decided to run through Liberty's football schedule at length was apparently something of a surprise to the parties involved. "Would you like me to read the names," Trump asked the audience, which rustled and laughed with the excitement of people who'd spent three hours sitting in the sun listening to the President say that various things were "becoming more and more." That Trump did—"Buffalo, Troy, Virginia Tech, oh no, Jerry, Ole Miss"—was more or less in character. That the school's series with Virginia, BYU, and Auburn had not previously been announced was, as surprise revelations by a confused and riff-prone President go, seemingly insignificant enough to qualify as a blooper.Anyway, that was Saturday. On Monday, the Washington Post reported that Trump had, while in a similarly voluble mood and without any more prompting, revealed extraordinarily sensitive intelligence information to Russia's foreign minister and ambassador during their meeting at the White House. The warning was right there for everyone to see: you can't tell this guy anything without him immediately telling it to someone/everyone else. If only we'd listened. Not to the first two hours and 45 minutes of the commencement speech, though. That seems excessive. That honestly seems like a bit much. Just, like, in general.
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