We are, right now, dealing with a war overseas with Iran that has done so much damage to our country’s reputation, military, and economy that the ramifications, serious as they are now, will likely only get worse in the years ahead.
At home, gas prices are climbing. Food prices and mortgage rates are rising. Wildfires are burning across the West. Tornadoes have torn through states like Illinois and Indiana, already shattering annual records. Flooding has once again devastated communities in Texas, Kentucky, and other parts of the Midwest.
Smoke from Canadian wildfires has turned the skies over Chicago and New York City orange. Thousands of Americans are suffering through an unusually severe Cyclosporiasis outbreak courtesy of Trump budget cuts.
And yet, Donald Trump chose not to talk about the war, grocery bills, FEMA, or public health Thursday.
Nope. He used a primetime presidential address, normally reserved for war, tragedy, or moments of profound national consequence, to relitigate, for the umpteenth time, the 2020 election. The biggest lie he’s ever told to the American people that just won’t die.
His nincompoop acting DNI, Bill Pulte, in his short tenure, clearly “found, “coverd-up,” “hidden-from-you,” “shocking” “nefarious” tidbits about debunked election interference for Trump to stop America in its tracks.
It was as underwhelming as Trump’s Great American State Fair. And he looked like what he is — a spoiled, squirming child. Bottom-line, everyone was out to get him, wanted him to lose, they were “wise” to him.
It was all so discombobulated. He, of course, started talking about his achievements, which was akin to a Colbert monologue — full of jokes. Boy, do I miss Colbert. Then, he railed at China, the CIA, burn-bags, deep state, electric voting machines. It was all just too much. A complete rewind from the debunked conspiracies of the past.
Only someone so far removed from reality would drag the country back into a long-settled election simply because he still can't accept defeat. And simply because he just can’t get enough of trying to convince himself and everyone else that the election was rigged.
Gallingly, that about sums it up. And if any GOP U.S. senators were watching tonight, wavering on whether to support Trump’s prohibitive and discriminatory SAVE Act, they can now definitively vote no.
Yet somehow, despite everything happening in America and around the world, Trump once again succeeded in making the week about 2020. Much to the horror of Republicans trying to win the midterms, the country is once again talking about an election that ended nearly six years ago.
Besides Trump’s foolish primetime charade, another reason it’s back in the headlines is Jay Clayton, President Trump’s nominee for Director of National Intelligence, and his confirmation hearing before the Senate Intelligence Committee. Senator Jon Ossoff of Georgia spent his questioning time asking Clayton a simple factual question: Who won the 2020 presidential election?
Clayton wouldn’t give a straight answer. He kept falling back on the line that "Joe Biden was certified as the president," but repeatedly declined to simply say Biden won. Ossoff pressed him directly, asking whether it was humiliating to have to dodge a question everyone in the room already knew the answer to.
And the 2020 election popped up again during Todd Blanche’s Attorney General confirmation hearing yesterday. He gave the same non-answer as Clayton.
It’s stomach churning to watch middle-age men shove their nose up the wide-load derriere of an 80 year-old bad-tempered buffoon.
As we all know by now, the 2020 election has become a loyalty litmus test for anyone Trump wants confirmed. It’s the price of admission cowardly fools pay to get a seat at the table of power.
For you, dear and knowledgeable reader, I do not need to list the many ways the 2020 election was, in the words of Chris Krebs, who ran election security for Trump’s own Department of Homeland Security, the most secure election in American history. Krebs said flatly there was no evidence of vote-flipping by any foreign or domestic actor.
That should be the end of the story, but this convulsive obsession of Trump’s won’t end. Hopefully the courts and the thousands of voting jurisdictions around the country were watching Netflix, or NBC, ABC and CBS, all of which declined to carry the primetime speech.
A primetime presidential address is one of the rarest and most powerful tools any president possesses. It is reserved for war, national tragedy, catastrophic disasters, or moments that demand the country’s immediate and undivided attention.
By interrupting regular broadcasting, the President’s goal is ostensibly to unify the country’s attention, offer reassurance, project stability, and lay out vital, decisive action.
Ronald Reagan comforted a grieving nation after the Challenger Space Shuttle disaster. I remember that speech vividly. George W. Bush addressed the nation in primetime after the 9/11 attacks. I remember the sorrow and solidarity I felt after that broadcast.
So here’s the question worth asking: Why, with everything actually happening in this country right now, is Trump going on primetime to talk about 2020?
Well, the answer is simple. He’s a selfish, petulant, indignant, malcontent crybaby. He doesn’t give a damn about the war, your bills, your flooded house, your dry heaves, or your irritated stomach.
But if you didn’t know that by now, well, I don’t have much use for you.
I had to watch the speech tonight because I had to write this column, and now I’m having dry heaves and an irritated stomach and violent diarrhea, and that’s probably the most useful thing Donald Trump accomplished all night.
While wars rage overseas, towns flood, grocery bills climb, wildfires spread, and Americans worry about tomorrow, the President of the United States used one of the most powerful platforms in government to refight an election he lost nearly six years ago.
Millions of Americans tuned in because they assumed the President of the United States had something important to tell them. Instead, they got a 60-minute reminder that the only crisis Donald Trump still cares about is the one that ended in November 2020.