Pete Hegseth announced on Wednesday that the US military will test soldiers over thirty years old for low testosterone. But judging by President Trump’s pallid performance last night during his election integrity speech, that testing should commence with him. Trump appeared to be a spent force, slurring many of his words and rehashing old grievances ad nauseam. His principal complaint: starting in 2019, China engaged in machinations to make it look like ‘your president wasn’t so hot’.
But last night, Trump himself failed to bring the heat. The American left went into overdrive, fretting that the President would fire an opening salvo to seize control of the midterm elections in November. In fact, he only shot blanks. The most he could issue was a plaintive plea for Congress to pass the Save America Act, a voting Bill that Trump has proclaimed will ‘guarantee’ a Republican victory in the midterms. ‘Congress must pass the Save America Act,’ Trump said. ‘How easy is that to do – unless you want to cheat? The only reason you wouldn’t do it is you want to cheat.’ So far, the controversial Bill has gone nowhere.
Trump is in deep waters at home and abroad
The most animated that Trump became yesterday was when he threatened to revoke the licenses of ABC and NBC News for failing to broadcast his speech. But even the President’s most loyal network issued what amounted to a thumbs-down verdict on his speech: ‘Fox News has not seen the evidence yet and is not in a position to evaluate the accuracy of the President’s statement and claims.’
Trump instead offered a dreary recitation of a farrago of claims about the attempt of foreign governments, mainly China, to influence American elections. There can be no doubting that much of what Trump averred was correct. Foreign governments have tried to influence elections. But he didn’t show that they’ve been successful or, for that matter, that his complaints about the 2020 election – which, incidentally, he lost to Joe Biden, who ran a basement campaign before becoming one of America’s most enfeebled presidents, right after Woodrow Wilson – was purloined. When asked last night if there was any intelligence proving that Trump won in 2020, John Solomon, the doofus whom Trump assigned to help run a taskforce to declassify intelligence documents, said ‘not yet.’
One problem with Trump’s obsession with the 2020 campaign is that he was president when it took place. He presided over the intelligence agencies. His claims of malfeasance would suggest that he bungled oversight of the elections. Another problem for Trump is that he won the presidency twice, when Democrats were in office, the first at the end of the Obama administration and the second at the conclusion of the Biden presidency.
Yet another difficulty is that Trump was not particularly careful about the nature of the documents that he released as part of his crusade for election integrity. One set showed that Russia disseminated false claims about Biden being ‘engaged in criminal activity in his dealing with Ukraine and individuals tied to Ukrainian energy firm Burisma’ as part of an effort to influence the 2020 campaign. Biden, in other words, was the victim of a Russia hoax.
If his speech is anything to go by, Trump’s own confidence in his ability to dictate events is ebbing. It wasn’t a sign of strength but a confession of weakness. A new Washington Post-Ipsos poll indicates that his overall approval rating stands at 37 per cent. The most ominous portent for the midterm elections is that Trump’s hold on his base has begun to shrivel:
A new low of 15 percent ‘approve strongly’ of Trump, down from 19 per cent in February, while 22 per cent ‘approve somewhat’. This is the first Post-Ipsos poll where significantly more than half of Trump approvers support him only ‘somewhat’, rather than strongly. During his first term, about two-thirds of those who approved of his handling of the presidency did so strongly.
Trump is in deep waters at home and abroad. The only thing his allegations of election chicanery have accomplished is to incense Democrats. It would be no small irony if Trump’s protestations end up prompting more of them to show up at the polls in November.
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