Just before Donald Trump returned from his tour of Asia he teased us all with the promise of something big...
There were no other clues - could it be a major policy announcement? A firing? A hiring?
Nope, it was none of those things, instead he spent 20 minutes in what amounted to a “victory lap” for what is essentially a fundamental part of just being President of the United States.
Trump appeared to struggle during the speech, breathing heavily and repeatedly stopping to take sips of water from a bottle he couldn’t find initially - something he once mocked Marc Rubio for doing.
There really is a Trump tweet for every occasion...
And here’s when he mocked Rubio at a rally.
Rubio, evidently, was watching closely.
Trump began with a summary of the part of his job that requires that he travel abroad for important meetings.
He said: “Last night I returned from a historic 12-day trip to Asia. This journey took us to five nations to meet with dozens of foreign leaders, participate in three formal state visits and attend three key regional summits.
“It was the longest visit to the region by an American president in more than a quarter of a century.”
This is true but at this point in his presidency Obama had visited 20 countries and Trump is only on 14 - he has played far more golf though.
What did Trump actually accomplish in Asia? Apart from continuing his criticism of North Korea he made no mention of human rights abuses in stark contrast to his Canadian counterpart.
And he drew widespread criticism for siding with Vladimir Putin over US intelligence agencies then had to distance himself from his own remarks and his tweet about Kim Jong-Un was like something out of a primary school playground.
Rather worryingly, he continued: “Everywhere we went our foreign hosts greeted the American delegation, myself included, with incredible warmth, hospitality and most importantly, respect.
“And this great respect showed very well our country, is further evidence America’s renewed confidence and standing in the world has never been stronger than it is right now.”
Since the dawn of diplomacy, “respect” has been the default setting for hosting foreign dignitaries and some suggested Trump’s apparent wonder at such things is evidence of how easy it might be to hoodwink the President.
Despite talking for over 20 minutes, Trump didn’t actually say anything of substance.
He once again took credit for stock market gains that are actually attributable primarily to Obama and made various predictions about how great America is going to be without saying how he was going to do it.
So in the absence of any news to report from the big speech, here are some humorous contributions from the Twitterati.