Donald Trump's inner circle are flapping after the president's bizarre national address earlier this week.
In a 20-minute speech to the nation, Trump made a series of claims later debunked by political analysts. Even The Republican Party is concerned with the president's speech, as some insiders believe there is a lot of work to do between now and the midterm elections next November.
Though one unnamed operative speaking to The Hill found positives to take from the address, they did note it would take a lot longer than people believed it would to turn things around for the GOP.
They said, "You can't turn around the Titanic that quickly." The unnamed operative also noted "there is still a lot more work to be done" for both the president and party.
Mick Mulvaney, who served as Trump’s chief of staff during his first administration, was critical of the speech, as were many other former representatives of the GOP. Mulvaney questioned "the purpose" of the address and asked why the president seemed to be yelling at those watching.
He said, "I was sitting with a group of Republicans watching it, and one of them asked out loud ‘Why is he yelling at us?’ National addresses are typically for very serious matters. In 2019 Trump did an Oval Office address to speak to the issue of the (then-longest) government shutdown."
"Last night, I was actually expecting something about war in Venezuela. What we got was essentially an hour-long rally speech compressed into 20 minutes. Which is fine, I suppose. But it didn’t really seem to fit the moment."
Rick Wilson, a former member of the Republican Party, also highlighted the nonsense style of speech and suggested Trump's address was a "deep scream of outright panic" from the president.
He said, "What you were watching is a deep scream of outright panic. Donald Trump was not in control of himself tonight, he did not understand how to get out of the hole he's put himself in, he can't figure out how to dig himself out of the economic disaster that he has caused."
"He can't figure out how to pull himself out of the polling slump where he now has an approval rating of 38%, that is a screaming, flaming, white hot stinking disaster. In the space of a 20-minute scream-a-thon, every single one of the greatest hits of 2024, threw it against the wall. Guess what? None of it was convincing. Not a single bit of it was selling."
