Questions about Trump's speech in Long Island [closed]
Two questions about the passage below.
- What does "Trump riffed" mean?
- What does "take the hand away" mean in this context?
When you see these thugs being thrown into the back of a paddy wagon — you just see them thrown in, rough — I said, please don’t be too nice,” Trump riffed. “Like when you guys put somebody in the car and you’re protecting their head, you know, the way you put their hand over? Like, don’t hit their head and they’ve just killed somebody — don’t hit their head. I said, you can take the hand away, okay?
Jul 28, 2017
Solution 1:
Riffing is improvising. The person in question is known to improvise.
Take the hand away means he recommends not protecting a suspect's head when placing them in the back of a police car – where rushing / pushing could bump someone's head. "Protecting the head" is a standard precaution, often seen on TV and film.
He said it, I didn't.
Solution 2:
Strictly speaking, a riff is not the same as improvising. So the online Cambridge English defines it as
in jazz or popular music a tune that continues or appears regularly in a piece of music while other parts change or are added.
For the verb riff it says very precisely
... to play a short, repeated series of notes.
Trump often does the equivalent of this in his speeches, repeating a short phrase again and again. And he does something like that here though it is not a prominent as it often is. However, there is a broader definition offered:-
To speak for a long time on a particular subject, especially in a humorous way.
This is typical of Trumps manner of speech-making: humorous (at least to his audience) and often repetitive. This is the sense of riffing that is referred to. There is often quite a bit of improvisation as well, but that is not what riffing is about.