President Donald Trump's public address Thursday night revealed a problem that not even a warehouse of testosterone earmarked for the military can solve, a New York Times columnist quipped Saturday.
Maureen Dowd argued in her scathing takedown of his "batty stew of whiny complaints" that Trump had little or no effect on those whose anger he meant to arouse — and the problem was the one his Defense secretary claims plagues the military.
"Trump seemed very low-T," wrote Dowd. "I’m surprised that Pete Hegseth...didn’t rush over to shoot up the flaccid 80-year-old commander in chief with the elixir of manhood needed, as he put it, to give America 'the leading edge of lethality.'"
As proof of Trump's "manhood" problem, Dowd ticked of the list of usual suspects who should have responded to Trump's rallying cry with outrage.
First came Trump's political party.
"There was barely a peep from Republicans on Capitol Hill about the speech," she wrote. "No organized effort to polish his tirade. You could almost hear the fervent wish of Republican lawmakers watching the president: Please, Donald, move on!"
Then there were the television networks Trump called out during his speech:
"He seemed impotent, raving about nonsense, threatening to punish ABC and NBC for not taking his weird rant live," Dowd wrote. "He struggled to wield his superpower: creating a fake alternate universe for his supporters."
And then, Dowd highlighted the surprising response from the conservative network that oftentimes echos his claims — but not on Thursday night.
"Even Fox News acted more skittish than sycophantish for a change, not wanting to relive its $787.5 million debacle as part of its settlement with Dominion Voting Systems after claiming its machines switched votes from Trump to Joe Biden," wrote Dowd.
"The next morning, Mediaite reported, 'Fox & Friends' did not mention the address once in its three-hour show."
Dowd quipped that if Trump wants to continue his campaign against U.S. elections, he may need a chemical boost to get "high-T." There's just one problem, she concluded: "Can that hormone be prescribed to babies?