Pete Hegseth has announced that the US military will test soldiers over 30-years old for low testosterone. But judging by President Trump’s pallid performance on Thursday night during his election integrity speech, the 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.”
This speech wasn’t a show of strength, but a confession of weakness
Last night, Trump himself never brought the heat. The American left went into overdrive, fretting that Trump 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.
The most animated that Trump became was when he threatened to revoke the licenses of ABC and NBC News for failing to broadcast his speech. But even Trump’s most loyal network issued what amounted to a thumbs down verdict on his speech: “Fox News has not sent he evidence yet and is not in a position to evaluate the accuracy of the president’s statement and claims.” The problem was that Trump didn’t provide any evidence.
Instead, he 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 doubt that much of what Trump claimed was correct. Foreign governments have tried to influence elections. But he didn’t show that they’ve been successful or, that this had a material effect on the 2020 election, which, incidentally, he lost to Joe Biden, who ran a basement campaign before becoming one of America’s most enfeebled presidents. 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 task force to declassify intelligence documents, said “not yet.”
One problem with Trump’s obsession with the 2020 campaign is that he was the president when it took place. He presided over the intelligence agencies. His claims of malfeasance would suggest that he bungled oversight of the election. Another problem for Trump is that he won the presidency twice. Yet another difficulty is that Trump was not particularly careful about the documents 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 show of strength, but a confession of weakness. 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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