Updated: Jul 21
No, I did not watch Trump’s rally speech last night. But having seen clips of it for the past six years, I didn’t feel that watching the Readers Digest condensed version was worth my – or most anyone’s – time. In fact, there wasn’t a need to watch his rally speech to hear what he’d say since I already wrote about that two days ago.
Is it possible that Trump was surprising last night and offered something new and important? Sure. Just like it’s possible that he would be announcing his resignation. Or possible that he’d be acknowledging that he actually lost the 2020 election. Or possible that he would be apologizing for all his lies and fascist actions. They’re all “possible” – but also improbable.
In fact, I could make the argument that Trump surprising anyone with his speech by not being about “Our elections are unsafe and rigged and China and I won I won I won” is more improbable than even those improbabilities because not only has the White House dropped hints of what this rally speech intended to undermine trust in elections would be about, but also because Trump has dementia, and so repeating himself over and over about what he’s obsessed over for the past six years is part of that medical condition. And because Trump is a malignant narcissist. So, expressing something new and different, and critical of himself is almost emotionally and psychologically impossible for him.
So, I feel pretty comfortable with not watching because not only I, but we all know what the divisive, obsessive rally speech will be.
That’s not to say he won’t have some surprises in his specifics. For a guy whose tangentiality – another medical condition of dementia – can have his speeches veer from the topic at hand to talking about sharks, windmills, autopens, solar batteries, Arnold Palmer’s genitalia, his Reflecting Pool, poisonous snakes, not winning the Nobel Peace Prize, gold-plated bathrooms, and god-knows what else?, there can be any number of surprises. For that matter, Trump himself may often be surprised at what comes out of his pie hole.
Notable is that both NBC and ABC said they wouldn’t be airing the rally speech – although individual stations owned by Sinclair Broadcasting did carry it. CNN also didn’t air the speech. MS NOW began showing the rally speech live, but cut away after about 14 minutes and instead began analyzing it in detail, noting how there was nothing in his rally speech worth taking seriously, even when he said something accurate, because he left out the truthful context. In the meantime, host Chris Hayes is monitoring the rally speech and jumping in with updates. How is it going, he was asked. “It got worse,” he began.
Fox and CBS did broadcast the rally speech. There’s a shock. Though not unexpected, ghosts of the Tiffany Network are nonetheless probably still shaking their heads wearily in shame.
I’m very sorry that, other than CNN, most outlets are covering the speech, despite NBC and ABC earlier saying they wouldn’t. A shame because it’s intended to create distrust in elections, which Trump has been doing for six years, one of the core tenets of fascism.
But – for all the outlets that did broadcast the rally speech, I have to think that, having seen Trump do this sort of thing for so long, he looked deeply out of touch and obsessive to most everyone but the faithful. Polls show that most of the country wants to hear about the economy, inflation, gas prices, consumer prices, Trump’s war in Iran – not whether Trump crazily believes he won in 2020 or that elections aren’t safe. In fact, I suspect that most of the public likely even assumes that our adversaries try to impact the elections – but then, I'm sure (and I write this beforehand, so it's all a guess) that Trump will not mention Russia’s effort in support of him in 2016. Nor will he mention that during that election he himself literally asked Russia to not just interfere, but illegally hack computers, and actually said on camera, "Russia, if you’re listening, I hope you’re able to find the 30,000 emails that are missing. I think you will probably be rewarded mightily by our press.” Nor will he mention, I’m equally sure, that Trump and his team were the one’s in charge before the 2020 election when he’s been crying out about a Rigged Election (!!) – which means he and his team are the ones who missed anything he’s been whining about, if they actually occurred. Nor will he mention, I’m certain, that when he returned to office, he himself has cut back on most of the cybersecurity protections, fired the FBI agents who investigate such attacks and fired all board members of the Election Advisory Committee. But then, wanting to influence elections and actually rigging them and rigging the voting machines are two completely different issues. Of which there have been investigations, and zero evidence of rigging has been found. None.
So, there’s a very good chance that despite whatever news outlets carried the rally speech, as divisive and fascist as I’m sure the rally speech was (a speech, experts said, did more damage to public trust in elections than China or Russia ever have done), it has a much better chance of backfiring on Trump -- showing an old, bitter, delusional guy rehashing very old news all because he lost in 2020 and isn’t talking about the issues that are actually, importantly concerning the public -- than causing “outrage!” over rigged elections.
Especially since, as my long-held theory about politics goes -- when you're popular and screw up, people tend to be forgiving, but when you're unpopular and screw up, it confirms to people why they don't like you. And Trump has a 34% approval. And this all won't backfire just on Trump, but on the MAGOPs in Congress who enable him, vote for what he wants and are the ones who will have to support the delusion of this speech.
But again, this is all based on not watching. Just totally guessing that I’m pretty close to completely right. Because we’ve all seen this rerun over and over. And over and over and over.
And from all the post-rally speech analysis I’ve seen – pointing out that the speech was full of lies, discredited charges, unsupported redacted material out of context, government reports by Trump officials that actually concluded that no illegal votes were cast, there was no manipulation of the voting and (as MSNOW reporter David Rohde noted) if any of these charge about the 2020 election were actually true…Trump and his Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe were the ones in charge who should have stopped this attacks at the time…if they had been true! – it seems like my decision not to watch means that, in the words of the ‘Guardian’ of the Holy Grail –
