President Donald Trump's much-hyped Thursday address focused almost entirely on supposed election security shortcomings, but according to a new analysis, it also inadvertently revealed that the president “knows” he and his party are in trouble ahead of the midterms.
Trump claimed during his primetime address that China had gained access to data on more than 200 million American voters, and that Homeland Security had identified 250,000 noncitizens registered to vote in the United States, though experts have said the Trump administration had yet to provide concrete evidence supporting its claims.
And, while the address didn’t appear to move the needle regarding the president’s false claims of systemic voter fraud in the United States, it did reveal that Trump “knows he’s losing,” The Bulwark’s Brian Tyler Cohen argued Friday in an analysis.
“There is a silver lining here. If Trump were operating from a position of strength, he wouldn’t have to do this. He wouldn’t have to serve up tired and convoluted conspiracy theories about a six-year-old election that don’t resonate beyond his diehard base,” Cohen wrote.
“But he’s not operating from a place of strength. And Americans know it. He knows it. The problem Republicans face in having full control of government is that there are no Democrats to point to and blame.”
While Republicans do face an uphill battle in the midterms as Trump’s favorability continues to reach new historic lows, Cohen still urged Americans to remain “vigilant” regarding the administration’s efforts to exert more control over the election process.
Still, Cohen argued Trump's reliance on baseless election security claims was itself a tell, a sign the president knows just how vulnerable his party's position really is.
“[Trump has] no Democrats to blame for surging costs, high inflation, a new war in the Middle East, suppressed Epstein files, high gas prices, and a government focused more on vanity projects for Dear Leader than lower prices for their own constituents,” Cohen wrote. “Trump wouldn’t need to engage in election denialism if he were winning; he engages in it because he knows that he’s not.”