We have all become so hypnotized, desensitized, bored, angered, and abused by President Donald Trump that at this point, it's far more productive to point to what Trump won't do, won't say, than all he will.
On Thursday evening, Trump meant to bring the country to a standstill with a presidential address, something normally reserved for Space Shuttle explosions, 9-11, or the hunt for Osama Bin Laden. In a country at war with Iran, at war with inflation, warring against wages and underemployment, and mostly at war with itself, Trump talked about the only issue that moves him: how the world perceives him day to day.
But even in that litany of grievances as to why the "most powerful man on Earth" remains ever the victim of even the pettiest of plots, it was what we didn't hear that roared.
Trump told us that “great damage has been done to our country,” and “Our elections were left vulnerable to being rigged and stolen, and the trust of the American people was lost. This cannot be allowed to continue.”
The allegation is just so damned tired that far too many in the media, and nearly all of Trump's supporters, have failed to ask some simple follow-ups: "If the most egregious of these offenses happened in the 2020 election, then you were the president at the time, charged with protecting this nation, and so how did you allow such great damage to be done to our country, and why should you be trusted to ensure it never happens again?"
Again, one gleans the real news here from what's not being said. The reason there's no scandal about Trump allowing the horrific manipulation of our 2020 election is that there was no horrific manipulation of the 2020 election. It is almost like the country, worn out by his incessant neediness and bullspit, has come to an arrangement suiting both; "We won't blame you for allowing our elections to be so easily rigged so long as it's fairly clear you're simply doing this for your ego, and won't act on it — not yet anyway."
Quite frankly, the deal has actually worked in the best interests of both parties for a while. Donald Trump gets to nurse the ultimate narcissistic injury back to health by convincing himself it was all wrong and he beat Joe Biden, and we rest assured that nothing is really going to happen because we've reached a sick detente — like the nominees for Senate approval who are asked: "Who won the 2020 election?"
They refuse to answer, the silence is deafening, the answer on display for all who hear through the silence, and again — the real news lies in all that wasn't said.
But the ultimate tell, the one that really proves that this is nothing more than an ego bath and the predicate for future claims that elections are rigged runs through China — no, not the nation of China but the China "issue." As reported by the Times:
Mr. Trump described a series of allegations about voter interference in the 2020 vote. He said that China had bought, stolen or hacked tens of millions of voter data files across 18 states. And he attacked a “deep state” conspiracy that he said was aimed at suppressing the information.
Wake up, please! Yes, it is extremely hard to care about anything this man says on any given day, but this one demands your attention. The President of the United States just effectively accused our current greatest adversary of manipulating the election and stealing it from him, the president at the time. Take that accusation dead seriously for just one moment in order to absorb the importance of what did not follow.
Having just accused a superpower of effectively illegally choosing the next American president over the rightful man chosen by Americans, having just accused that superpower of doing so with supposed proof that China did it in all those documents, did the American president do what any president would leap to do in the face of such an outrage?
Did Donald Trump immediately demand that China explain itself? Did he lay out a set of sanctions he will impose and forward to Congress even more punitive sanctions against the nation behind such a plan? (President Obama and a bipartisan Congress wasted less than two months in sanctioning Russia for real election interference in 2016, and yet still affirmed Trump as the winner of the election and the rightful incoming president. Of course, Obama and that Congress had real proof of such interference.) Did Donald Trump call out Chinese President Xi Jinping and demand an answer, a summit, or even threaten war with China for having done so, or threaten war if they ever do so again?
No. And that silence is the real reveal, one circling the globe, proof once again that the U.S. is in decline due to a petty man, with petty false grudges, consumed with monetizing each moment, and will sell his own country out to anyone buying.
Because Trump skipped right over the fact that the world's only other superpower, according to Trump's own theory, displaced him as president, and instead went to war on... Americans, his real enemy — American citizens who just happen to be politically opposed to him.
“Yet those responsible for sounding the alarm instead kept the information secret and hidden,” Mr. Trump said. “They did not disclose to me as president or to anyone else, and to the best of our knowledge, they did not inform Congress.”
Who is "they"? He never says, not really. Doesn't need to, so long as "they" exist in some liminal space in which Trump lives his alternative life, where he is always the "winner."
Set aside the fact that he was president at the time and thus "they" should never have been in a position to keep such information from him (as if something that explosive would not have leaked). Having just accused China of what is essentially an act of war against the United States, Trump moved to this personal war against his only real enemy, the domestic one, the one he is prepared to wage war against, troops, tanks, all of it.
And even though he has no more real evidence against Americans stealing an election from him than he does with China, it doesn't matter because all he really needs is the accusation. The accusation itself justifies all the news to be found in all that was left unsaid. The accusation says, "Don't call me a loser to Joe Biden because I didn't lose!" Like warm milk to soothe the angry baby, but much more dangerously, the accusation says, "And we cannot trust any upcoming election in which any Democrat wins.
He is saying this despite the fact that it's his job to protect the nation from international threats. But instead of threatening to send three carrier groups to control the port of Hong Kong should China make such an attempt again, Trump did all he could to stifle the votes of Americans, votes that might go against him — actually aiding any nation that believes it benefits by keeping the U.S. under Republican control, nations like China and every nation run by a despotic dictator who can manipulate Trump through flattery and currency to obtain a deal favorable to them.
Unlike the message we're hearing from most American media, Trump's Thursday night speech roared with critical information American voters desperately need. The problem is that the roar came from all that was left unsaid, unacted upon, and unimportant because it's all unsubstantiated.
Snap out of the Trump daze just for a few seconds! The American president just accused China of kicking him out of the Oval Office in 2020! If Donald Trump actually believed such a thing, and if Donald Trump believed in his job as protector of the nation, not himself, we would, today, be on very nearly a war footing with one of the only countries on earth that could give us a real fight.
Instead? Nothing new, everything already said, documents dumber than ham, disinteresting as Jesse Watters, and as untruthful as having settled eight wars.
Don't buy the media line about Thursday night. Donald Trump made one of the most important speeches of either term. It wasn't just what wasn't said, but also the unspoken promise that it won't ever be said when he says Democrats grabbed both branches of Congress through RIGGED elections. Not a single Republican victory will be questioned, another silent tell, only that one is just cute enough to get a giggle.
If you just a) Pay close attention even when you know he lies and repeats, and b) Listen closely to what's not said, you will c) Not only understand exactly what is happening, but have the answer to confront a Trump supporter, or a Democratic candidate fighting a "RIGGED" question before the election, or an accusation after a win.
Presidential addresses still matter. But with Trump, the power lays in what he doesn't say.
Jason Miciak is a Rawstory columnist, former editor of Occupy Democrats, an author, political consultant, attorney, and single parent girldad. Please follow on Bluesky and he can be reached at jasonmiciak@gmail.com and reads and appreciates the community within the comments.