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Based on the shreds of information coming out of the White House, however, Trump’s speech tonight is not expected to address changes in economic, immigration, or Iran-related policies. It’s become plain for all to see that those are not Trump’s primary concerns, even though they’re clearly primary concerns for the American people. But this won’t be a speech, just as this isn’t a presidency, that’s concerned with the American people. This will be a speech for those who Trump believes are the only real Americans, that 15 percent of the public who still strongly approve of his doings. Presumably, they share his obsession with his unrecognized, albeit entirely fictitious, victory in the 2020 presidential election, which he’s supposed to take another run at tonight. His goal appears to be stirring up the MAGA base to the point that they will harass and assail Republican senators still unwilling to pass the SAVE America Act, which would give Trump the power to strike millions of Americans—well, millions of Democrats, anyway—from the voter rolls. Republican senators would have to scrap the 60-vote cloture hurdle in order to do that, and even then, it’s not clear they could get to 51 yes votes. So far, that’s a bridge that some Republican senators—enough to keep that from happening—won’t cross. For his part, Trump has made clear that the SAVE America Act is really the only piece of legislation that matters to him, as a Democratic victory in the midterms would unleash investigations, at minimum, of his tsunami of misdeeds.
The buzz around the speech says that Trump will unveil horror stories of foreign influencers, sneaky noncitizen voters, and vote tabulators besotted with the metric system, or something like it, who combined to tip the election to Joe Biden. He may allege that China was behind all this, though if you look at recent global polling, it’s clear that majorities in many countries now view China as a more stable, or at least less capricious, hegemon than the United States under Trump—something that was not the case during the Biden presidency.
So if you opt to watch tonight’s address, prepare yourself for Donald Trump’s chamber of horrors, as lurid and ludicrous as those presented by Barnum and Ripley, but a great deal more dangerous. Keep in mind, this really won’t be a speech for you or your fellow Americans, but rather only for the benighted elect that constitutes his shrinking base. That, in turn, mirrors his strategy for the midterms: It’s not about backing policies that might enable him to win the election. It’s about winnowing the electorate, as the only way he might survive.
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